Long Way Down

Description "An intense snapshot of the chain reaction caused by pulling a trigger." --Booklist (starred review) "Astonishing." --Kirkus Reviews (starred review) "A tour de force." --Publishers Weekly (starred review) A Newbery Honor Book A Coretta Scott King Honor Book A Printz Honor Book A Los Angeles Times Book Prize Winner for Young Adult Literature Longlisted for the National Book Award for Young Peoples Literature Winner of the Walter Dean Myers Award An Edgar Award Winner for Best Young Adult Fiction Parents Choice Gold Award Winner An Entertainment Weekly Best YA Book of 2017 A Vulture Best YA Book of 2017 A Buzzfeed Best YA Book of 2017 An ode to Put the Damn Guns Down, this is New York Times bestselling author Jason Reynoldss electrifying novel that takes place in sixty potent seconds--the time it takes a kid to decide whether or not hes going to murder the guy who killed his brother. A cannon. A strap. A piece. A biscuit. A burner. A heater. A chopper. A gat. A hammer A tool for RULE Or, you can call it a gun. Thats what fifteen-year-old Will has shoved in the back waistband of his jeans. See, his brother Shawn was just murdered. And Will knows the rules. No crying. No snitching. Revenge. Thats where Wills now heading, with that gun shoved in the back waistband of his jeans, the gun that was his brothers gun. He gets on the elevator, seventh floor, stoked. He knows who hes after. Or does he? As the elevator stops on the sixth floor, on comes Buck. Buck, Will finds out, is who gave Shawn the gun before Will took the gun. Buck tells Will to check that the gun is even loaded. And thats when Will sees that one bullet is missing. And the only one who could have fired Shawns gun was Shawn. Huh. Will didnt know that Shawn had ever actually USED his gun. Bigger huh. BUCK IS DEAD. But Bucks in the elevator? Just as Wills trying to think this through, the door to the next floor opens. A teenage girl gets on, waves away the smoke from Dead Bucks cigarette. Will doesnt know her, but she knew him. Knew. When they were eight. And stray bullets had cut through the playground, and Will had tried to cover her, but she was hit anyway, and so what she wants to know, on that fifth floor elevator stop, is, what if Will, Will with the gun shoved in the back waistband of his jeans, MISSES. And so it goes, the whole long way down, as the elevator stops on each floor, and at each stop someone connected to his brother gets on to give Will a piece to a bigger story than the one he thinks he knows. A story that might never know an END...if Will gets off that elevator. Told in short, fierce staccato narrative verse, Long Way Down is a fast and furious, dazzlingly brilliant look at teenage gun violence, as could only be told by Jason Reynolds.