Twenty-Four Seconds From Now

This book is a love story. A love story that is unashamedly for and about Black boys. It starts at a point where 24 seconds from now, the protagonist Neon, is going to go to bed with his long term girlfriend for the first time. Neon is nervous and worried so the book starts with him freaking out in the bathroom. Then we rewind to 24 minutes earlier, 24 hours earlier, 24 days earlier, 24 weeks earlier and 24 months earlier and this is how the romantic story is told – with the expertise and skill we have come to expect from the writing of Jason Reynolds.

Neon is a filmmaker, he is making the first online yearbook for his high school and he has high hopes for a career in film himself. So the structure makes perfect sense as you find out backwards about Neon, his family, his relationship with Aria, her family, the loved and hated dog Denzel Jeremy Washington, and their joint community – and how all these things are part of their lives. It’s a series of snapshots but each one so carefully and beautifully constructed that, by the end of the book you have a wonderful picture of the journey Neon has been on, the love he feels, the respect and commitment he has for Aria and the tenderness and honesty of their relationship.

Twenty Four Seconds From Now is openly and without guilt or embarrassment written for teenagers and it deals frankly with all the things that teenage boys are thinking and wondering about. It is about having sex and about desire and curiosity. It doesn’t shy away from answering (or asking) questions that teenagers are likely to have and is carefully and genuinely honest and tender.