The Boy in the Black Suit by Jason Reynolds
Release Date: January 6, 2015
Publisher: Atheneum Books for Young Readers
Genre: Young Adult Contemporary, Death
ISBN: 978-1442459502
Source: Received from Friend, Eric Smith
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Just when seventeen-year-old Matt thinks he can’t handle one more piece of terrible news, he meets a girl who’s dealt with a lot more—and who just might be able to clue him in on how to rise up when life keeps knocking him down—in this wry, gritty novel from the author of When I Was the Greatest.

Matt wears a black suit every day. No, not because his mom died—although she did, and it sucks. But he wears the suit for his gig at the local funeral home, which pays way better than the Cluck Bucket, and he needs the income since his dad can’t handle the bills (or anything, really) on his own. So while Dad’s snagging bottles of whiskey, Matt’s snagging fifteen bucks an hour. Not bad. But everything else? Not good. Then Matt meets Lovey. She’s got a crazy name, and she’s been through more crazy than he can imagine. Yet Lovey never cries. She’s tough. Really tough. Tough in the way Matt wishes he could be. Which is maybe why he’s drawn to her, and definitely why he can’t seem to shake her. Because there’s nothing more hopeful than finding a person who understands your loneliness—and who can maybe even help take it away.

When friend and local author, Eric Smith (The Geek’s Guide to Dating) sent a tweet out offering up a bundle of books, I jumped at the chance of taking one of those books as it is one that I was highly anticipating, you may remember me mentioning it in my January roundup. I was so excited to read The Boy in the Black Suit on the plane last week and am happy to say that I loved it. Thanks, Eric! I can’t wait to pass this onto my sister who saw me instagram The Boy in the Black Suit and has since been dying to read it herself. Side note, stay tuned for my review of Eric’s latest book, Inked!

It’s so weird how a person can be a normal part of your everyday life, and then just disappear.

Okay, so…The Boy in the Black Suit! What a great book. In this novel, we follow a kid, Matt who has just lost his mother and could, at any moment also lose his father who is not taking the loss well. Matt is in mourning and trying to navigate the world without his mother and without a responsible adult to help him in this awful time. He feels alone and so badly wants to feel that he’s not. He also wants to do something with his life. He wants to be better and we see him take the steps he needs to take to do that. We see him choose to say yes. That is so beautiful. And in this, we see that he ends up working at a funeral home and sitting in on the funerals that he works. It’s a heartbreaking cycle here but we all go through our struggles in different ways and this is how he goes through. This is his journey.

So many burials, and here I was wishing that I could bury a few things of my own.

I love that this story explores losing people we love, losing chances at a better life, losing so much, not just one thing, and gaining all of that and more as well. It’s about mourning. It’s about moving. Action in inaction. Love. Appearances that don’t paint the whole picture. Our pain and our desires and what happens when the two come head to head. It really is a riveting look at the life of a young boy with a good head on his shoulders who loses his center but finds it again and what he does in the in between.

And I realized that it’s not that death is bad. It’s not. It’s just that life is so good.

What I also love about this book are the people and the setting and the little things that mean so much. We see respect, the good in the community, and also the bad in the community that Matt resides in. We read funeral home humor that gets those employees through their days so that they don’t have to take home so much grief everyday. I also really appreciated the representation of so many different funeral experiences because there is a contrast depending on the culture, community, the deceased person’s last wishes, etc… and I must say, I thought many times throughout reading this book that a great alternative title would be The Cruelty of Flowers.

Anyway, my only issue really is that I wasn’t a big fan of the ending…it kind of just ended and I felt like there could have been 50 more pages but besides that, I really enjoyed this. I read this book in two sittings on the plane and am so glad that I had this book on my radar because while I think there’s something different everyone can take away from this book, what I took away was the significance of stillness and the will to say yes and really move.

The Boy in the Black Suit by Jason Reynolds is available today.