I have loved this book. This was my first book by Colleen Hoover and since then I haven't stopped reading her books!

Well you know you have a book addiction when you look at some of your NetGalley reads and you realise that it was actually 2012 when you were approved for the book that you are reading.

My thanks to the Publishers for the copy and huge apologies for the length of time that it has taken me to get round to reading the book.

Set around the lives of Will and Layken a young couple that, who meet and develop feelings for one another when Will moves into the neighbourhood that Layken lives in. Fate has things in store for the young couple that they wouldn't have wanted to happen to their worst enemies in some ways. Can this young couple overcome what fate has in store for them or will they be beaten by it?

Boy I do wish I had read it sooner is all I can say. Yes there are parts of it that left me wondering what the hell and then there are other parts that left me with my heart fluttering in some ways, wanting to know how things were going to end for them. On the whole though I enjoyed it and I will be reading more in the series.

To find out how the story pans out, then grab yourself a copy from somewhere and settle yourself down to read it.

Rereading this years later, I am still surprised by how emotional this book makes its reader. The characters feel so real that they could be your neighbors. Without spoilers, what Layken and Will are dealing with has happened to many people and reading it is like reading real life.

The angst, oh, the angst of New Adult books. This one was pretty typical of the genre, with horrible things happening right and left. Every character had a tragic back story and seemingly could never catch a break. I've been on a mission this last year to finally read the older books in my Netgalley account, but if it wasn't for that, I probably would have DNF'ed this.

On the one hand, I did enjoy the poetry/slam aspect of the story and how much passion the characters poured into it. The author is a good writer and it shows. Will and Lake's younger brothers were great kids and were bright/light spots in the story. Will was a decent hero, kind, mature beyond his years, and trying hard to do the right thing, although I did feel that as soon as Lake started pulling her drama, he really should have thought to himself "Okay, self, this is why it's not a good idea to date a girl still in high school" and just walked away.

On the other hand, Lake was my least favorite type of heroine, whiny, immature, self-absorbed, and overly dramatic. No matter how hard Will tried to be mature and responsible, she kept sabotaging him, then throwing all kinds of hell at him when he wouldn't give in to her. As for the way she treated her mother initially upon learning her secret, I just wanted to slap her. On top of all that there was the insta-love aspect of the story. I mean, really? They'd known each other for all of a couple of days, went on ONE DATE, yet they were soul mates separated by cruel fate. Ugh. I finally gave in to the drama and let myself just be entertained by it all, but this won't be going on the keeper shelf. I voluntarily read and reviewed an advance copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

I’ve been trying to keep a lookout for new YA books to try, so when NetGalley touted this book and its sequel in an email, I requested the titles. Unfortunately, I don’t think these books are really what I’m looking for in YA: a compelling novel intended for a teen audience but sophisticated enough to appeal to older readers as well.

As the story opens, Layken Cohen is on the final leg of a road trip, moving with her mother and 9-year-old brother Kel from Texas to Ypsilanti, Michigan. The move is necessitated by the recent and sudden death of Layken’s beloved father. Her mother has been offered a job in Michigan that would pay much better than any she could get in Texas, and the family financial situation is such that she doesn’t have the option of turning it down.

Layken has just turned 18 and is about to start her senior year in high school. She is not happy about the move – she’s leaving everything familiar to come to an alien (and cold!) place. Her mood is almost immediately lightened upon arrival at their new house when she meets Will, a neighbor whose younger brother becomes fast friends with Kel. Layken and Will fall fast for each other; after a handful of encounters, one date and about a week of elapsed time, both are already quite moony. Then Layken goes for her first day of school and discovers that Will is her poetry teacher.

Well, that’s a bummer.

What follows is a lot of push-pull “we can’t/we must” business on both of their parts. Will is 21 and has been responsible for his younger brother since their parents were killed in an accident when he was 18. He is interning as a teacher while he finishes his degree, and he really needs the money (and also needs not to have his planned career ruined by allegations of an inappropriate relationship with a student). He puts a stop to the burgeoning relationship and tries really hard to do the right thing but apparently the attraction between him and Layken is just so overwhelming; living across the street from each other, having brothers who are best friends and seeing each other at school every day doesn’t really help either of them develop the needed distance.

The title is a riff on Will’s interest in poetry slams. I was confused by the fact that nobody in the book seems to have heard of poetry slams; maybe they’ve been around so long they sort of died out and are making a comeback? I don’t know. But, anyway, Will’s into them, big time: on his first date with Layken he takes her to a club that features poetry slams on Thursday nights, and subsequently he makes his students a deal: to attend and perform at the slam and they can skip the class final.

I thought most of the poetry performed at the slams was pretty bad. Granted, maybe they would be more powerful to actually see live, but on paper they came off as all having a distinct formula, regardless of the performer or subject: 1) write a short monologue on some horrible trauma in your life; 2) perform monologue in a loud, staccato, rhythmic style, emphasizing random words for unclear reasons. It would be okay for them to be bad if the characters didn’t constantly react like each one was the most brilliant thing they’d ever heard.

It took a long time for me to get a feel for either Layken or Will; at first, both of them seemed relentlessly bland and lacking in personality. Layken supposedly misses Texas and can’t wait to move back after she graduates, but we never hear what she misses about it. She didn’t seem to have much of a life there – she went to a small school, and appears not to have had many friends (she had one best friend whom she mentions a couple of times as barely having talked to since she moved). It’s fine that she wasn’t a social butterfly, but the lack of detail, the lack of history contributes to the featureless, bland vibe she gives off as a character.

To make it worse, when Layken does show some personality, it’s usually when she’s expressing anger, which is often. I certainly have known 18-year-olds who are still given to teenage-girl histrionics of the “I hate you!” punctuated-by-a-slammed-door variety. I just don’t necessarily want to read about them, especially not as a first-person heroine. I think one of the challenges for me as an older reader trying to find good YA books is this: I want to read about characters who are relatively mature for their ages, but not unrealistically so.

Layken’s immaturity made the relationship with Will more problematic for me than it might have otherwise been; 18 and 21 isn’t necessarily a big deal, 18 and 21 and a teacher/student power imbalance is kind of a big deal, and immature 18 with mature 21 on top of that is heading towards being potentially icky. I kind of wondered what Will saw in Layken (well, I wondered what they saw in each other, at least during the early instant-attraction phase, since neither seemed that interesting; later they do bond over a number of heavy burdens that made their attachment to each other more realistic).

Midway through the book, another tragedy strikes. It really felt like too much to me. Layken’s dad, Will’s parents, Layken’s new best friend Eddie’s hard-luck story of an abusive mother and foster care placement, and now this? These are definitely the unluckiest young adults in Ypsilanti. I’ll spoiler tag this one:

[spoiler]Layken’s mom, who has been acting mysterious (Layken thinks she has a boyfriend and is predictably enraged) turns out to have terminal lung cancer. Layken is a huge asshole about this, initially refusing to speak to her mother (she goes over to Will’s and spends the night, platonically, in his bed, after hearing the news), then, when they do speak, becoming furious again about her mother’s plans to have a family friend raise Kel. (Gee, I can’t imagine why she wouldn’t want Layken to do it!) I get that she’s suffering a lot of stress; and I know firsthand that people don’t always react the way you want them to when someone is dying. But the selfishness, while it lasts (she does eventually snap out of it, though she doesn’t go so far as to apologize, or anything) was just so monstrous to me. That’s your mother. Your dying mother. Show some compassion and understanding.Also, it becomes pretty clear that Layken will be orphaned at 18 and raising her nine year old brother, just like Will, which was just too fantastically coincidental for me.[/spoiler]

An action of Will’s late in the book brings my opinion of him down a notch, too – he reacts with over-the-top and inappropriate jealousy when he thinks Layken is kissing another guy. I think the point was to show his intense passion for Layken, but all it did was make a previously stable character look kind of unhinged. Overall, the characterization of Will was inconsistent and didn’t quite ring true.

I did find Slammed progressively more compelling; towards the end I was pretty involved in the story, even if I had issues with both the characters and some of the plot points. For that reason, my final grade for it is a B-.

I see this is on my shelf from 2012, but I must have missed it. Sorry, I did not read or review it and my reading rights expired long ago. Thank you anyway for giving me the opportunity.

Wow, talk about a book that grabs you by the heartstrings and never lets you go. I absolutely adored this book. I think the best part of this book for me was that there was no high school "drama". There were not catty girls, none of the things that generally occur in these type of books. There was definitely angst and the story was solid and wonderfully told. The subject matter was heartbreaking, but I loved it from start to finish.

5 stars

What can you say about the entire Hopeless series? I'm not sure that as an adult I could have survived the devastatingly losses. I loved how much each of the main characters felt about each other. Enough to make sure that they took care of each other. Colleen Hoover is very gifted in writing compelling plots and very genuine characters. I always look forward to what is next. And her what is next has not yet disappointed.