Rating:
Genre: Young Adult Romance
Falling in love can feel like poetry. Or it can feel like a slam to the heart.
Colleen Hoover’s romantic, emotion-packed debut novel unforgettably captures all the magic and confusion of first love, as two young people forge an unlikely bond before discovering that fate has other plans for them.
Following the unexpected death of her father, eighteen-year-old Layken becomes the rock for both her mother and younger brother. She appears resilient and tenacious, but inside, she’s losing hope. Then she meets her new neighbor Will, a handsome twenty-one-year-old whose mere presence leaves her flustered and whose passion for poetry slams thrills her.
Not long after a heart-stopping first date during which each recognizes something profound and familiar in the other, they are slammed to the core when a shocking discovery brings their new relationship to a sudden halt. Daily interactions become impossibly painful as they struggle to find a balance between the feelings that pull them together and the forces that tear them apart. Only through the poetry they share are they able to speak the truth that is in their hearts and imagine a future where love is cause for celebration, not regret. – Atria Books
**
While I enjoyed reading Slammed, I didn’t find it to be realistic. My connection to the characters failed as they didn’t contain the substance needed to make me care about them. If I can’t relate to a character, or feel their circumstance is probable, you lose me. Case in point, I’d believe a 24-year-old was a student teacher rather than the actual 21-year-old (Will) we’re supposed to believe is teaching students only three years younger than he is. Not buying that for a minute. Add in the flimsy plot, editing errors and lack of surprise, and Slammed is not the tear-jerker some readers have promised it to be. Or maybe I’m just all out of tears for the predictable.
The female protagonist, Lake, is supposed to be seen as mature by Will, yet she behaves very childishly and comes off as naïve at times. I’m not sure how Will could think Lake was a mature teenager in college. He may have been fooled, but I was not. The story is told in the first person narrative, which makes my case for me. Being inside Lake’s head, you get her thoughts firsthand and have to wonder why anyone would think she’s a levelheaded teenager taking the first steps toward adulthood.
There was too much drama in this one book. It may have been Hoover’s intention to write a tear jerker, but damn! How much negativity does a character have to go through? I didn’t shed a single tear, by the way. I kept asking myself, “what else can happen to this poor girl,” hoping Lake wouldn’t fall apart by the end of the novel. The tragic events were well overdone.
The poetry slamming doesn’t have the same effect in written form. Watching poetry performed in this way is amazing but it just doesn’t give off the emotion and passion it should in Slammed. Hoover tries to put across Will’s physical movements as he performs a piece, then she stops doing that with all the other poems. That device may have helped pull me into the moment in that one instance and I was confused as to why it wasn’t continued. Reading poetry is one thing; when you want readers to feel the reason behind the poetry, a writer has to go beyond just words to do it successfully. Hoover doesn’t do that here.
Even with all my complaints, I wanted to finish Lake and Will’s story. There was something about it that made me continue flipping pages to figure out what would happen in the end. It’s funny how that works sometimes and Hoover surprisingly makes it work for Slammed. I will read the next book in this series, Point of Retreat, which is told from Will’s POV. The series can only get better, right?
I was provided an ARC by NetGalley and the publisher for an honest review.
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