Now Is Not the Time to Panic

by Kevin Wilson

Publisher: Ecco an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers

Ginasbookreport Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Genre: Literature

Read This If You Love: Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil and Normal People

We are fugitives, and the law is skinny with hunger for us.

Frankie is living her teenage life in the small town of Coalfield, Tennessee when Zeke moves to town. The two become entwined in each other’s worlds. As they are striving to discover who they are, they set off a chain of events that leads to the Coalfield Panic of 1996. Decades later, the truth arrives on Frankie’s doorstep. Is she ready to tell what really happened in the summer of 1996?

Now Is Not the Time to Panic is a master class in writing and storytelling. Sometimes you start a book and just immediately know it will always stick out in your memory. (Out of all the new releases in 2022, I would list Sea of Tranquility and Now Is Not the Time to Panic as top-tier must reads.) Now Is Not the Time to Panic is a coming-of-age story that captures the complexities of wanting to simultaneously fit in with your peers and also discovering what makes you unique. 

So I kept it inside of me, and that weirdness and sadness vibrated all the time, and maybe I’d just been waiting for someone who wanted me.

There were SO many snippets of writing that really stood out to me throughout this book. Phases like… 

The whole world opened and I walked through it.

I mean. That’s good, right? Then, I came to the last few paragraphs of chapter 9 and they perfectly capture the interconnected complexities that we have on the world.

…that someone might know who you are, even as you spend all your time thinking that no one understands you. It’s such a lovely feeling.