Now Is Not the Time to Panic by Kevin Wilson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
“But Zeke needed to know. You had to choose sides. And you always chose the person who didn’t fuck everything up. You chose the person who was stuck with you.”
What an incredibly unusual story. This is the story of Zeke and Frankie who spend a summer together making a poster that has Zeke’s art and Frankie’s words on it. They then plaster the poster all over town. Next thing you know, it gets enmeshed with a story some teens make up to get out of trouble and things get out of hand and copies start appearing all over the world. It becomes a phenomenon. Crazy things happen. It gets out of hand.
And the whole time, no one knows they started it all.
“I thought that the saddest thing that could happen was that something inside your head worked so hard to make it into the world and then nothing happened. It just disappeared. Now that I’d put those words into the open air, I needed them to multiply, to reproduce, to cover the world.”
This book captured the feeling of being a teen and coming of age in the 90s. What art is. What friendship can look like during those years: intense and like it’s your whole world. The characters are so real, jump out of the page so much that you can’t help but root for them.
“And I wanted to say that it wasn’t his fault, that it was an accident, but maybe everything is an accident. Maybe nothing in the world is intentional. Maybe everything that has ever happened and ever will happen is some dumb mistake. So who cares if you apologize?”
Wilson’s stories have so much heart and are so unique and so bittersweet and the characters are so flawed and yet beautiful. It’s not possible not to love the books. And this was no exception.
with gratitude to netgalley and ecco for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review
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