Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds Review

Hi Foreverbookers, 

I’ve just finished The Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds and to be honest I didn’t really like it. 

1.5 Stars!

I read it for the diverse read for the Contemporary-a-thon. I thought there would be more to make it diverse than there actually was, though. The only thing, as well as the model on the cover that made it diverse to me was,

“A guy got on.

Definitely older than me

But not old

Medium-Brown skin” 

so it counts I think, but barely. 

Anyway, the poetry is about a young boy, Will who is on an elevator ride to the ground floor to avenge his brother’s murder. That’s it!

We see ghosts (just people that Will can see) get on at every stop to try and change Will’s mind. Do they, though? You’ll have to read to find out...

What did I like about The Long Way Down? 

I liked how it mainly focused on the black community. So many YA novels are about white people, so it made a change to read about solely black people. 

I liked how it was a quick read. It took me under 90 minutes to read it. 

What didn’t I like about The Long Way Down? 

I didn’t like the format. Poetry really isn’t my thing so that might have been why. 

I didn’t like the ending. It didn’t seem good enough. I wanted more...

Im giving The Long Way Down only 1.5 Stars because I thought more could have been done to make this worthwhile. For example we could have had a couple of pages on black and white segregation and A LOT more could have been made of the ending. The novel/poetry just seemed to stall for me, unfortunately.

Stand by for my next review coming soon...