Unfortunately this wasn’t for me DNF, the characters just weren’t all that great, and the story just wasn’t there.

If a slingshot is a symbol of childhood playthings and amusements, this story works as a coming of age tale for the socially awkward. With perplexing family dynamics, shared over boarding school downtime, there's a lot of life lessons for Gracie, especially after Wade becomes part of her life. Do they save each other? Maybe. But the subheading of "true love has the worst aim" is misleading because this is clearly infatuation of two souls who have their moment in time. True love perseveres (yes, I've been to a lot of weddings) and this relationship is just a starting point. If the story is about abuse and its impact, then we need more of that. If this story is about figuring yourself out against the backdrop of your unique family life, then go with that. There are moments of absolute brilliance served alongside a buffet of YA tropes that have been left out to entice. Go ahead, heap them onto your plate, but when the flavors merge, you can't quite put a name on the muddled flavor profile.

This book was not for me. The writing and the characters did not appeal to me as a reader in any way. Had to stop reading after a few chapters. DNF

I hated this book. The main character was extremely unlikeable. I only got halfway through because after she slept with the asshole classmate just to get losing her virginity over with I was out.

What a beautiful, realistic, extremely poignant novel with John Green and Sally Rooney’s character vibes! Realistic fiction dances with coming of age!

In this book: NOBODY IS PERFECT!
Parents suck! Teachers are biased! Protagonists are flawed, making so many mistakes to break each others’ hearts.

Angst, sadness, taking risks to fall in love and to be loved in return, loyalty, pure honesty, dysfunctional families, self-discovery, bullying, destroying your emotional barriers are the issues were realistically questioned in this book.

Both Grace and Wade catch something so pure, delicate, unique but of course they are young, inexperienced, scared and they cannot take back the words come out their mouths or turn back in time to make things right. Both of them earned a special place in my heart. They were adorable.

I’m not gonna give any spoiler but I have to tell: I cried, I hurt, I yelled a lot during my read: i didn’t expect to be affected so deeply. The characters are so genuine, natural and their stories are so relatable because everyone of us experienced the same phases and we still remember how to be 15, feeling like nobody is understanding us, bottling the anger, resentment and pain, having no idea about who we are or we are gonna be!

This impeccably written, heart wrenching, questioning and remarkable book helped me make a quick mental time travel to remember those days!

No more words: highly well-earned, deep, intense, unique, truly poignant four stars!

Special thanks to NetGalley and Wednesday Books / St. Martin’s Press for sharing this emotional ARC with me in exchange my honest review.

I don’t think I’ve ever read a book that plunged me so deeply back in my 15-year-old self’s mind—back to when the world is crazy and scary and totally indecipherable and people were so weird. While the story—somewhere between LOOKING FOR ALASKA and the latest THE BEST LAID PLANS—didn’t impress me much, the same can’t be said about the way Helnwein drew her characters and brought them to life. This story is full of heartbreak (at least if you’re 15, I imagine) and wit. I really loved the writing. Man, it’s tough being 15!
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

I was 100% drawn in by the cover of this one but the content itself actually blew me away.
Slingshot was a perfect lost-characters-finding-each-other-at-the-right-time book! It was sad and touching yet full of sarcastic humor and attitude. It was a really good love story that felt so genuine.
There were some very emotional moments that Grace goes through in the story with her new friend, Wade. It will definitely pull at your heartstrings and you'll find yourself rooting for Grace as she discovers more about herself and the world around her.
I really think that this book is going to be a great addition to YA literature.
Thank you to Netgalley, Wednesday Books and the author for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!

Really enjoyed this book thank you so much for the opportunity to be able to read this cute, hilarious, and beautiful story. I really like the writing and the story in general

Thanks to the publisher for providing an eARC of Slingshot in exchange for an honest review.

I am so uncomfortable and no one will convince me that anyone in this book is the age they say they are. Anyways, let's unpack this.

We open on Grace, our 15 year old protagonist talking about her certainty that her and her bio teacher are soulmates which is... creepy and problematic but hey! Maybe it's an innocent crush Grace doesn't realize is creepy. Except it isn't. Grace goes so far as to cuss out the teacher when she finds out he has a fiance because she genuinely thought they were soulmates. Already I was wondering why we started here. What should my takeaway from chapter one have been? Pity for Grace? Laughter? Second hand embarrassment? I'm not sure but all I got was disgust and that's basically how the rest of the chapters played out to.

I talk a lot about authors writing 15 year olds as 18 year olds and 18 year olds as 15 year olds because they treat 'high school' as one age group (yes, 4 years doesn't mean much to adults but that's a substancial amount of time when you're that young) and never have I seen it done worse than here. First off, every single character in this book talks like a jaded 30 something combined with a 10 year old trying to swear as much as possible to appear 'adult'. I think whether or not a character swears and the frequency of it is a really important way of creating different character voices and when you're dealing with a group of younger teens, having them all not only be 100% comfortable with swearing but doing it ever 2 seconds just read as absurd. (to reiterate: I'm 15 with 15 year old characters swearing. I'm not fine with every single 15 year old character swearing).

And of course, the book's main feature. Sex. Again, I am aware some 15 year olds have lost their virginity but it is a very small percent (google told me it's about 20% tops and that's for both genders. Men tend to lose their virginity over a year before women. This is all in my search history now and I hate myself) the way everyone in this book was just like "casual sex at 15? No biggy!" just felt so weird to me and beyond me being like 'what the heck is going on' it made the plot weird. Grace loses her virginity to a high school senior named Derek. Since they have sex after Easter break, that means he's either 17 or 18 and afterwards our player 17/18 year old reveals its the first time he's had sex with a virgin. Which... maybe believable? But then the next page he says he's glad Grace is casual about it saying one time after he slept with a girl she left notes in his locker for 'a year and a half'. That means this man has been having super casual sex since he was 16 at the oldest (but probably closer to 15 since the statement implies the girl didn't recently stop leaving letters), frequently sleeps with younger girls, and has never slept with a virgin?

Anyways, sorry I made you sit through statistics about teenage sex but yeah. Did not like this book.