A quietly hopeful book that reaches for the heartstrings and makes the reader want to be and do better, while never seeming like that's what's happening. The balance this book strikes between grief and community and friendship and hope and relationships and strength and looking forward and really living life while taking place in an innercity neighborhood is what makes it so powerful. It has moments of brilliance that I wanted to bookmark and put on a poster on my wall, but in Jason Reynolds' writing style never felt preachy at all. I did not expect to be so touched by this book, but truly was. There is just something about this character, what he's struggling for, the relationships he has, and the way it is written that all worked for me. I want everyone to read The Boy in the Black Suit, and I'll start by handing it off to my students. Reynolds is an incredible new voice in children's literature, and I hope he sticks around for a very long time, because he is writing stories about kids in neighborhoods that need stories about kids like them and the people they know and things they go through every day, and this story just felt so real and honest, and that is thanks to the writing of Jason Reynolds. 

By Jillian Heise 

I am having a renaissance. It’s cultural, personal and steeped in my own identity. I am reading writers of color and characters of color. This seems obvious. I’m black. I am of color. I am from the Bronx. I was born in the city and bred in the hood. Of course, I read books about people like me. Only, for most of my life I haven’t. In high school I was handed F. Scott Fitzgerald, S.E. Hinton and J.D. Salinger. I read and reread The Outsiders so many times, because somehow in my heart I connected with these white teens, who were poor, lived on the wrong side of town and buried friends. I got that. Because, I was poor, I lived on the wrong side of town and I buried friends.

For the longest time, I thought that S.E. Hinton would be the closet I’d ever get to what my life was and has been. Then I met Adam Silvera, and Jason Reynolds and suddenly I was awake.

Suddenly, in order to get characters of color I don’t have to read “urban” novels that I consumed like candy in my youth. It’s not all about The Coldest Winter Ever or Push. Now, I have More Happy Than Not, that is human story about kids who live in neighborhoods not too far from where I grew up, with a sci-fi edge. I can read When I Was The Greatest and get invited to the hottest house party in Brooklyn or I can go on the journey of lost, grief and acceptance with Matt in The Boy in The Black Suit.

I love this book, because of its simple complexity. For years, with my love of werwolves and vampires and space ships, I forget that a story doesn’t need complex time travel loops in order to be good. A story can be about a young man who has to move on from the greatest loss of his life. Simple. And, yet emotionally compelling. Matt, with his simple and chill look at the world pulls you in. He’s the kid who lived next door from you, no matter where you grew up. He’s that kid, who is nice to his peers, respectful of his elders and trying to figure out who he is.

He’s the kid who does not deserve the life that has suddenly been given to him. Which is what makes his journey so compelling. He doesn’t deserve it. How will he react when his life gets flip turned upside down?

Something I love about Jason Reynolds is that he gives you the hood, and all of it’s truths without being over the top. Just because you live in Brooklyn doesn’t mean you’ve held a gun. Doesn’t mean you’re best friends with a drug dealer. It doesn’t mean that you have beef with rival gangs. Does that life exist outside the walls of your apartment or house? Yes. Does it have to be your truth? No. It doesn’t.

There’s this thing in literature and movies where if you come from a certain place your life has to be an NWA album. It doesn’t. That stuff can touch your life, but it doesn’t have to be your life.

Jason Reynolds gives us truth. We know the world on the other side of the door, but we get the inside. The loving mother who taught you everything you need to know to survive. The best friend, who is loyal to you in the midst of everything. The girl, you meet by chance who makes your heart beat again after all the heartache.

This book made me sad, it made me laugh, it showed me a world, a culture and a neighborhood so apart of me that I rarely get to see it in books, TV, or the movies.

This book is so real and yet so entertaining and so thought provoking. Jason Reynolds doesn’t have to draw out in minute detail why Matt puts on his suit every day and goes to the funeral home. We get it. We feel it in the pages, we feel Matt’s emotions. His confusions, his heartache, and we feel it when his heart begins to mend, when he begins to heal, even though he will always have hole there that was his mother.

I highly recommend this book and also everything by Jason Reynolds. Just too good to miss out on. Reccomended for fans of Adam Silvera, Nicola Yoon, Jennifer Niven and Walter Dean Meyers. 

                         By Naoms