I love reading YA books and this one was set at a boarding school and I absolutely love those kinds of books. This book is about Grace's first year at boarding school and her learning about herself and also learning about love. I think this was super enjoyable and I think it's such a good book for teenagers. I definitely thought it was going to be more romance heavy but it was more of a coming of age book. It was still a really enjoyable read.

This is a definite marmite book - after seeing quite a few negative reviews I was intrigued as I was really into it from the start! It was exactly my type of teenage angsty grungy romance. I found the characters believable, the soundtrack and interests really relatable, the family and relationship issues touching and scary in equal measure. There is nothing more intense that your first teenage love, and it really took me back to my own feelings back then. I really really loved it.

Funny at times, with nice characters and a beautiful romance story c this story was a perfect escape for me. And I’m sure it will fit perfectly for everyone who will give it a try

Very grateful to the publisher for my review copy

I thought this one was going to be a cute, fluffy romance, so if that is what you are looking for, don't go for this one. It is not that.

Slingshot is the story of Grace and her interactions with love during her time at her boarding school. The side-plot of this story (Grace being in love and kind of obsessed with her teacher) was really uncomfortable to me as an adult working in that field, but separate from that the rest of the story is really interesting. Grace is a perfectly unlikable main character. She's angsty, mean and thoroughly irritating at times, but I enjoyed this about her. She isn't perfect and isn't trying to be. I also enjoyed reading about Wade. His imperfections and how well they both blended together in messy ways.

It is a terrible love story about messy teenage love. It is far from perfect and it's dark, gritty and painful. I think that's why I enjoyed it more than I expected to. It's a far cry from the cover however, that cover completely throws you into a different direction.

I will definitely look out for more from this author. I don't hate a horrible main character and I love some darkness and grittiness in my romance.

Thank you to the publisher, author and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Discovering new YA contemporary authors is always fun because the genre is often dominated by the big names. In fact, this one was billed as ‘for fans of Rainbow Rowell’. I never usually pay much attention to comparisons like this because I think every book deserves to be judged in its own light.

Grace is a bit of loner at her Florida boarding school but she’s OK with that. Then her trusty slingshot stops new kid Wade from being beaten up and now she has a handsome rulebreaker in her life. Before she knows it, Wade appears to have a deep hold over Grace and she has no idea what to do with that. But Wade appears to have a secret and Grace might just be able to save him.

Due to the title, I thought that the slingshot would feature a lot more than it did. I understand that it is down to the slingshot that Grace and Wade meet but I can’t pretend that I wasn’t craving at least some kind of clever circle-closing involving the slingshot at the end. I don’t think the slingshot was a big enough motif to warrant naming the book after it.

The book opens with Grace experiencing ‘heartbreak’ when she realises that she and her Biology teacher Mr Sorrentino won’t ever be together. Now, it’s probably reasonably common for teens to have crushes on their teachers but few will be as delusional about it as Grace is. She gets seriously angry and behaves awfully, as soon as she learns that he’s engaged. This kind of possibly psychopathic reaction is an immediate red flag and it becomes obvious why everyone appears to avoid her. Sadly, Grace isn’t friendless because she’s ‘a bit weird’ -she’s just plain not nice.

One of my favourite characters was Grace’s roommate Georgina. She is hopelessly uncool and Grace says that she feels sorry for her. However, I didn’t really see many reasons to feel sorry for Georgina. She is willing to try almost anything, is fantastic at being unintentionally funny and has a wonderfully endearing charm about her. She is probably a bit too weird to be accepted by the jocks and theatre kids but on the whole, this doesn’t really seem to bother Georgina too much. She also does her best to be friends with Grace, who appears to be wholly interested in her. I’m a big fan of awkward nerds!

Another of my favourite characters was Beth, an insanely cool, laid-back senior who takes on a kind of big sister role for Grace, although Grace clearly has a huge girl crush on her. Beth is incredibly casual about things that most people (certainly teens) take seriously and some readers may declare that it makes her read like an adult. I thought of Beth as being a little like Alaska Young in John Green’s Looking for Alaska -wild and reckless but fantastically good-hearted. If I’m honest, I was kind of hoping that Grace and Beth would catch feelings for each other and that would be the big endgame romance. I’ll tell you now that however much you wish for that to happen, it doesn’t.

Grace is thoroughly self-absorbed as a lot of teens are. In fact, she is so self-absorbed that she doesn’t even notice that Wade is great boyfriend material until someone else implies it. Because of this, I wasn’t really sure whether Grace really liked him or whether she just wanted him because someone else suggested that he was desirable. Therefore, it was quite hard to get on board with the relationship in general.

There is a thoroughly unsavoury character called Derek, who made me retch every time he popped up. I had trouble reading him as the senior that he is supposed to be because he seemed to be on a similar intellect level to Grace. This was actually a common problem throughout the book. Some characters read like teens and others like adults and it didn’t always correspond with the grade that they were supposed to be in.

A lot of the negative Goodreads reviews of this book suggest that it seems unrealistic for 15-year-olds to drink, smoke, swear and have casual sex. It has been a while since I was a teen but I know for a fact that although I didn’t do a lot of those things myself at 15, some of my classmates definitely did. I don’t know whether this is a UK/US difference or maybe even a millennial/Gen Z difference but from my own experience, I certainly wouldn’t say that it’s unrealistic for 15-year-olds to behave like Grace does.

If you don’t mind a thoroughly unlikeable protagonist who does very little to redeem herself, it might be worth giving Slingshot a go. There are some great side characters and a few funny exchanges but I can’t see this becoming a YA contemporary classic anytime soon.

I really didn't enjoy this book. Reading it was a struggle. I was bored. The protagonist, Grace, irritated me from the word go. She's 15 and is at a private boarding school in Florida where she tells us in the first chapter that she's in love with her biology teacher and he is her soulmate. She points out all the little signs he's given her which are rather obviously not signs at all. Then when he brings his fiancee to the school play and introduces her, At this point, Grace goes absolutely ballistic and yells at him.
She then goes on to save a new boy at the school, Wade, from a group of bullies with her slingshot and the story of her and Wade goes on from there. It was just tedious though. There was something about her - probably her ridiculous outburst at her teacher - that made me not really root for her as a character so I never really felt invested in the story.

It was the tag line that it would suit fans of Rainbow Rowell that led me to request this one from Netgalley and I can certainly see why the comparisons were made. I fell in love right away with the spikey heroine and her unconventional experience of first love and the entertaining and eccentric secondary characters. Although my attention dipped slightly in the middle, I was sufficiently invested to continue reading and as really satisfied with the way things all turned out. Very enjoyable.

One of my favourite settings: a boarding school. This is in the same vein as the book ‘prep’. A girls first year at a boarding school. She feels like an outsider, friendship and romance progresses as she makes it through the year.