Justin A. Reynolds’ impressionistic, speculative, emotionally accessible and beautifully original novel, Early Departures, explores the pain of regret that attends sudden and unexpected death, especially when it happens to young people.

Jamal has one regret in his young life – he didn’t save the life of his close friend Quincy – Q - Barrantes when the young man drowned. They had once shared everything, from college plans to a love for Jauncy, a digital comedy program that obsessed their teenage years. Even as he tries to move on with his life, with his girlfriend Autumn and his pregnant sister Whit by his side, Jamal is haunted by Q’s memory, struggling under the weight of his grief and guilt over something that came between them prior to Q’s death.  Q was inadvertently involved in the deaths of Jamal’s parents, and Jamal subsequently ignored Q’s pain when his father passed.  In the wake of all three tragedies, Jamal has become adept at pushing others away and indulging in the local party scene.

Then medical science intervenes. There’s a new sort of medical treatment which can reanimate the dead for a brief period of nineteen days. While the dead person has no idea that they had ever died and may even display altered personalities without careful intervention, their living friends and relatives have another few days to cherish with them.  Q’s mom chooses to reanimate her son, leading Jamal to try to repair the rift between them without revealing that Q has died – and soon will die again.

Early Departures is a powerful character study with a sci-fi gleam, a wonderful sense of personality and a completely fresh and original voice.

It’s a book about two things: the way grief can weigh a person down to the point of shapeshifting their emotions and identity, and the importance of embracing life. Jamal learns to overcome much and especially do the latter as he comes of age in the wake of Q’s death and second life. It’s a fascinating journey that’s both surrealistic and bracingly grounded.

The book has a lot of stylish prose, and its minimalism has great purpose and liveliness that make it amazing.  There’s something thrilling and unique about its sparseness that grips the reader. The poetry of grief and the lusty power of life are given equal weight in a beautiful yet prosaic way.

All of the characters are memorable in their own way – from Q’s emotional mom to funny Whit.  We get a few doctor types from the hospital thrown into the mix as well, and they contribute nicely to the story as a whole..

There are two central relationships here – Q and Jamal’s intensely close friendship-turned-conflict and Jamal’s relationship with Autumn, which is complicated by Jamal’s sense of loss, which constantly forces him to push her away. Both relationships are given equal weight, with room left for Q’s mom to process her feelings about her son’s death and Whit’s strong bond with Jamal to take some narrative space.

My only real criticism of the piece is that I felt as though Whit could have pulled a little bit more narrative weight.  I like what she got to do in the book, but I wanted more of her. But that’s only a small bobble.

Early Departures will cause teenagers to dream and to feel seen and understood at the same time, especially if they’ve experienced a death in their lives.  It’s a moving, enriching and rewarding experience that’s absolutely worthwhile for them and adults alike.

Buy it at: Amazon, Audible, or your local independent bookstore
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If you had the chance to bring a dead person back to life, for a short period of time, would you do it? Would you make amends before they leave? Would you regrow or continue a love that you know will end in a set amount of time?

“Early Departures,” the newest novel by Justin A. Reynolds (author of “Opposite of Always”) answers these harsh questions in a beautifully heartbreaking way. The book follows Jamal as he deals with the untimely death of his former friend, Quincy/Q, and the chance he is given when Q is “reanimated” for a limited time after his death. Q and Jamal grew apart after Jamal’s parents’ deaths, but after his death and knowing he has a limited time, Jamal decides he wants to reform their friendship. What follows is one of the most heartbreaking and heartwarming books I’ve read all year.

Reynolds sets up “Early Departures” to be one of the best stories about living your life to the fullest while absolutely breaking you at the same time. The rekindled relationship between Jamal and Q is heartwarming, but against the fragile backdrop of Q’s final days, every action hits like a punch to the gut as the reader comes to terms with Jamal that this won’t last forever and all good things must come to an end.

Accompanying Jamal and Q is a small band of characters that add to the complete sense of the circle of life and love that fills our lifespans. These characters include Autumn, Jamal’s girlfriend; Ms. Barrantes, Q’s mom; and Whitney, Jamal’s pregnant sister, all of which represent aspects of Q’s life that made him who he was and will be remembered as. Their roles in this book as so important and keep the book easy to follow and that much more enjoyable to read.

What really drives “Early Departures” is its messages and ability to drive these messages home so clearly and hard-hitting. On the one hand, “Early Departures” is a book about life and death, the pattern every living thing follows, and our inevitable end. How, despite this end, we should use the time to make relationships with the ones we love and to not use the time being angry or mad at one another. On the other hand, the book is a story about friendship and holding onto those who make us who we are. Jamal is a character who is clearly off from his normal self, and when he actually comes around to being the person everyone adores, it’s when he’s back to being good friends with Q. It’s the kind of story that makes you want to put the book down and call your friends to tell them how much you appreciate them.

This book has a way of putting mortality and appreciating time, no matter how short it may be, into such a deep perspective. In many ways, it reminded me of “They Both Die at the End,” which I believe any fan of that book should read this one, but this one, with all respect to Adam Silvera, hit differently.

As a more personal note, this book had me bawling my eyes out the entire last 10%. The last book I cried that hard to was “The Two Lives of Lydia Bird” and even then, I believe I cried harder at this one. Even writing this now, I have tears welling up in my eyes over how heartwrenching the end was.
The Verdict

Justin A. Reynolds has created a masterpiece with “Early Departures” and may be one of the best books about life and mortality written thus far. This is easily one of the most memorable books of the year for me personally and has left me thinking about it for hours upon finishing. From its multiple messages on life and enjoying the time available to the loveable duo of Jauncy, this is a YA masterpiece that belongs on everyone’s TBR list.

My final rating: 5/5 Stars

It's been a while since I've truly felt like I couldn't put a book down, but I never wanted to stop reading Early Departures. A powerfully patient reflection on death and dying, Reynold's new young adult novel adds a speculative twist to the timeless topic.

With short chapters that read like poetry or a diary, the book follows Jamal as he tries to cope with and repair his relationship with his best friend, Quincy, after Quincy has been brought back to life. With poetic tension, though, Quincy's reanimation comes caveats, however: that he will die again within a matter of weeks., and that nobody has told him that he ever died at all. Interestingly, though, Quincy's impending death is not the center of the novel; rather, the conflict is internal as Jamal navigates both guilt at having waited so long (too long, in fact) to reconnect with Quincy and gratitude for the opportunity to do so.

The very short chapters really kept me reading, and I loved the incorporation of different media through various text conventions. There are also intense flashes of true anger, fear, and sadness from each of the largely peaceful--overwhelmed?--characters. In what has the potential to read as an overly-docile treatise on "not wasting a minute of life," the textual dissonance these moments cause helps keep the story pleasantly-uncomfortable. Early Departures is a stunning piece of art, but it's also a book about death, dying, and all the pain that can cause.

What if you could rewind the past, just a little bit? What would you do differently? That is the premise behind Early Departures, a story about families, both biological and chosen.

The story seems a typical teen saga but takes an unconventional turn a few chapters in when a family makes a choice to take the opportunity for a revised goodbye. The main characters seem to be believable imperfect beings coping with massive losses and disruptions to their lives along with misunderstandings.

The message of the story: we need to tell those that we care about how much we care about far more often than we do. Family is also who you invite into your closest proximity, not necessarily bloodlines. Finally, the book makes you question whether honesty is always the best policy, especially in dire circumstances with those you care about the most.

The only downside was that a character’s ending seemed a bit rushed and brushed over, devoid of specifics.
Thank you NetGalley for the ARC.

Early Departures balances grief, loss, and celebration to tell a story about the tenuous nature of life and the suddenness of death. The prose has a drifting or wavering quality early on, helping build a sense of fragility which perfectly fits the text.

Besides the obvious themes of life and death, there's a lot of grappling with discomfort and truth. When is is honesty the best policy? How much does someone really need to know something when it's bad news they can't change? This book doesn’t pretend to have the right answer, it just tells one very moving version of what a small group of people try when they get a second chance to say goodbye. It's often sad but has some very happy moments, telling and showing ways that the characters choose to celebrate life while they can.

Jamal is a fantastic MC, he feels really earnest even when the book thinks he might not be doing the right thing in his personal life, and the whole effect works really well. This feels like the kind of book I’ll come back to when I need it. That doesn’t happen to be right now for me, but it offers a certain kind of catharsis that I appreciate.

CW for pregnancy, drowning, car accident, parental death, major character death.

Following Jamal on his journey as he grieves for his friend--and his parents--while trying to do what he thinks is right was so emotional. I also really enjoyed having strong female characters in the story. While they were not main characters, I felt they were incredibly well-developed. And I felt the grieving process, both for the end of a friendship and the deaths of parents, were handled well and accurately. I would absolutely recommend this book to anyone, but especially teens who need to know they are not alone in grieving.

Man, do I enjoy the mind of Justin Reynolds. First, he gave us The Opposite of Always. Now, he gives us Early Departures. There just the subtlest of science fiction in his books, so light that even the most avowed hater of science would still read and enjoy these books. I love the way his protagonists grow and mature, but also are still finding themselves at the end of the book. There were parts that were a little cheesy, but overall, I really enjoyed Early Departures.

This was more like a 3.5 stars. I really appreciate the concept and the conflict - Jamal stopped being friends with Quincy two years ago, and then Quincy dies, but scientifically there's a way to bring him back to life long enough for his loved ones to get closure. So Jamal has to use that time to make up with him and spend a little more time together.

The way this story was told was a little frantic and eccentric. I can see how that relates to the plot - finding out you have a few more days with a dead loved one IS frantic and eccentric. But it ended up being a little messy.

The narrative is a little modern-day stream-of-consciousness for me. It's sentence, line break, sentence, line break, sentence - it kind of felt like a mix between weird poetry and when you send multiple texts to your friends instead of putting it all in one message. It wasn't necessarily a turn-off to me, because it felt real, but it made things feel a little rushed.

There was very rarely a TRULY serious moment in this story, which is both refreshing and strange. Everyone cracked jokes all the time. I deal with a lot of my problems by laughing at them and even I wanted a break from it. It was realistic, especially the rare serious moments that wrapped up with a joke, but sometimes a book being too realistic in ways like that can actually take you out of the story.

All this isn't to say it wasn't a good book. It was the story of Jamal healing not only from his friend's death, but their broken relationship before, and the death of his parents two years earlier that he never even tried to heal from. Jamal had a healthy relationship with his girlfriend, Autumn, and Autumn was a wonderful communicator and tried her best to help Jamal but also accepted that she would need to walk away if he wasn't able to meet her needs. There was also no real toxic masculinity keeping Jamal and Quincy from telling each other how they really felt - even if it was due to the circumstances, it'll be good for teen boys to read.

Speaking of teen boys, I'm really here for more books about straight Black boys, especially ones that have plots that don't involve their race. Without discounting any other books about Black kids, it's always nice to have more options to recommend to every demographic at work, and this is one that I feel I have the hardest time finding books for. So I'll definitely be recommending it when it comes out.

Even though it didn't fully click with me, there were a lot of parts in this story that really hit me. I'm super scared of death, and when I read this passage it took my breath for a minute:
"And I suppose the story moral is: You can die and still live on. You can be alive but be consumed by death. The difference between living and being alive is: Everything." (quote is subject to change in the finished copy btw)
And, of course I cried, it's a book about second chances and final goodbyes. So overall I do recommend this story, but with adjusted expectations - it's nowhere near as hard-hitting as I expected it to be.

Damn. This book was beautiful and this man can write. The structure of this one was very compelling. An honest and heartbreaking book about grief, about the difference between doing what’s right and doing what is good for you, about the power of male friendship, about loss and love.

Early Departures had me hooked from the beginning, and I couldn't put it down! I loved the concept behind this book and the technology associated with reanimating the deceased. At first, I was put off by all the tragedy experienced by the characters from the get go, but it's clear how important this grief was to the whole story. I appreciated the hopeful message about living each day like it's your last and the power of forgiveness. Aspects reminded me of Adam Silvera's They Both Die At the End, in that knowing the end result did not take away from wanting to read how everything would play out for Jamal and Quincy. I could easily see Early Departures as a film or an episode of Black Mirror!

This book broke my heart into pieces and then put it back together again. Justin A. Reynolds has a way with words. There were so many quotable sentences about grief and healing and friendship. I loved Jamal's growth and his journey to acknowledging that you are allowed to grieve but you still need to live and be alive and present for the great moments that are waiting to happen. I also liked the themes of forgiveness, friendship, and family that are present in this book. This book was heavy and if you aren't in the right mindset for discussions of death and grief I would hold off on reading this book. However, I read this after someone who impacted my life passed away suddenly and while I cried so much during reading I found this book to be very cathartic and healing for me personally. Everyone is different, though, so be aware of that if you think this is something that will trigger you take the appropriate steps for your mental health. The characters are so funny that they often injected a lot of humor and funny moments in between these heavy moments that I found myself laughing and crying at the same time. I think this book is great and will be recommending it to everyone.

Buy this book for your classroom. Buy text sets. Buy copies to give to your young friends—heck, buy them for your old friends too. Just get this book in the hands of humans.

Loss. Death. Desertion. The heaviest topics often seem to reliance on cliches and stereotypes. Not so here. Jason A. Reynolds builds a world where the impossible happens & death is cheated—if only for a time. The characters are artfully rendered & created with a richness that gives them authenticity and tenderness that makes them relatable and endearing. Even when they make decisions that are selfish and contrary, the depth at which they’re developed makes the reader ache alongside the characters as the results of those decisions unfold.

I have read some amazing books this summer, but they’ve all been missing something significant in story development. This one missed nothing. The rich, engaging, & captivating story coupled with authentically flawed & beautiful characters make this a front runner for the top of my 2020 reading stack.

Justin A Reynolds is a force to be reckoned with. This man creates characters that go on the most epic hero journeys. And even when you want to hate them, you love them because they are so raw and real and you see yourself and your mistakes in them. This story was NOT what I expected, in the best way possible. I won’t give spoilers, but Jamal and Q were destined to be brothers forever. And that love never dies.