Justin A Reynolds Books in Order

If you want a YA love story with a sci-fi twist: Opposite of Always → Early Departures
If you want funny middle grade adventure: It's the End of the World and I'm in My Bathing Suit → Running in Flip Flops From the End of the World
If you want basketball and teamwork: Shot Clock → Clutch Time
If you want superhero graphic novels: Miles Morales: Shock Waves → Miles Morales: Stranger Tides

Justin A Reynolds was born and raised in northeast Ohio, and books were part of daily life early on. His mom was an educator and longtime librarian, so he and his sister spent a lot of time around library shelves. He has said he can still remember imagining his own name on the spine of a book at the library, which is a pretty specific dream for a kid, and a good one.

That writing dream showed up early.

Reynolds likes to point to a piece of green kindergarten paper, still hanging in his mom's office, as the first proof. On it, he wrote that he wanted to be a writer. Years later, that small classroom declaration still feels like the start of the story.

The road there was not neat or direct. He was born and raised in northeast Ohio, came up around Elyria, competed in Power of the Pen in middle school, and later studied English literature at Cleveland State University. Before publishing a novel, he worked a long list of jobs, including NASA intern, night security guard, pest control operator, janitor, flooring installer, faucet-fixture salesman, and registered nurse. He has said he traded the stethoscope for a pencil, but likes to think both tools reveal the heart.

His debut novel, Opposite of Always, arrived in 2019 and quickly introduced readers to the kind of story he likes best, funny on the surface, emotional underneath, and willing to take a big speculative swing. The book follows Jack and Kate through love, loss, and a time loop, while also making room for friendship and illness. It became an Indies Introduce Top Ten Debut, landed on year-end best-of lists, was translated widely, and later moved into film development. Readers often come for the banter and stay for the heartbreak.

He followed it with Early Departures, another high-concept YA novel that uses temporary reanimation to talk about grief, blame, and the things best friends leave unsaid. Then he opened up his range even more. It's the End of the World and I'm in My Bathing Suit and Running in Flip Flops From the End of the World bring his humor to middle grade, mixing chores, neighborhood chaos, and apocalypse-level weirdness. With Shot Clock and Clutch Time, written with Caron Butler, he shifts into basketball stories about teamwork, loss, pride, and family pressure. And in Miles Morales: Shock Waves and Miles Morales: Stranger Tides, he gives Spider-Man room to be heroic, nervous, funny, and very much a kid.

A lot of Reynolds's books circle the same questions. How do you show up for your people? What does grief do to a friendship? What do young people do with second chances, especially when the world feels unfair or unstable? Even when he writes about time loops, reanimation, or superheroes, the emotional center is usually everyday life, crushes, jokes, family tension, and the fear of saying the wrong thing too late.

He writes for young readers, but he never talks down to them.

Reynolds still lives in northeast Ohio with his family, and he has helped build reader community there too. He is a co-founder of the CLE Reads Book Festival for middle grade and young adult readers and writers. If you've seen one of his short bios, you also know he likes snow, Lake Erie, the Cavaliers, and dancing terribly.