Slingshot

My thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for a free ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

WELL!  For a while there, I thought my entire review would be written in capital letters.  This author has a quirky wit and a very wry sense of humour.

Fifteen year old Gracie was, in her own mind,  a "Rebel With Lots of Cause."   She was the illegitimate daughter of a man with a "real  family" on whom he showered most of his affection, time and money.  Gracie and her  "always look on the bright side mother" were left with the dregs. -  of just about everything.

At the start of the story, Gracie is suffering the agonizing pangs of her first bout of unrequited love for her biology teacher.   Gracie is an extremely intelligent girl, but you  realize that she is  a typical self-absorbed, melodramatic teen with a huge chip on her shoulder.

The story is told from Gracie's point of view, but the reader can easily read between the lines and  see that Gracie is often the victim of her own turbulent emotions.   She is very independent and scorns the popular crowd, but for some reason the cool and hip Beth influences several  of Gracie's life-altering choices.  Her friendship with Wade was downright charming - if you ever dared used such an adjective within Gracie's hearing!

In the end, this is a highly entertaining, insightful, and extremely well written story about growing up,  making good choices from the slim pickings that life has left you with, surviving and moving on.  I really liked the realistic ending.  It will be interesting to see what other reviewers have to say about it. 

This author took all the usual tropes and shook them up.  Love triangles - you bet!  But, well, that was not really a LOVE triangle in the usual sense/  Read it, and  you'll see what I mean!

I grew to like Gracie, despite her prickly ways.  Granted, she often got on my nerves a bit.  There were times when I wanted to tell her to smarten up and tell her father exactly how she felt about his unequal treatment, but then this would have been a totally different and much shorter story, right?  

Highly recommended!  A five out of five for this debut novel!

It is really tough to know where to start with this one. I loved every damn page of it. The author, Mercedes Helnwein, has this beautiful way of making you fall in love with complex characters that aren’t innately lovable on the surface. 
In the middle of the Florida swamp, Slingshot is set in the least glamorous depiction of a boarding school of recent memory.  Gracie navigates 24/7 high school, an unconventional family, and romantic pursuits with beautiful sarcasm and wit. I was surprised to find that a literal slingshot makes its debut as an emotional support mechanism, but it created a situation that was the perfect representation of the character that would follow.   Gracie is the type of young girl you hope to identify with- badass and unapologetically herself, which is so unique for a teenage protagonist. 
Her journey of growth throughout the book is not a typical young adult trajectory, and I think the fresh take, coupled with the unique voice of the author make this a MUST READ.

Slingshot is the story of Gracie and Wade, and how they navigate their relationship during their sophomore year at a private boarding school.  It’s really hard to review their story without giving a way any spoilers, so I’ll try not too, but man this story reeled me in at the beginning. I love, love Gracie even though she has issues. She reminds me of someone very dear to me, whose on the spectrum and everything Gracie did I could totally relate because that’s exactly how my friend is. To me the story played out like a 80’s teenage rom com, except the girl fell for the best friend instead of the hunky quarterback and ugh Wade, I wanted to wrap him up in the biggest hug ever.  I loved everything about this story but the end, don’t get me wrong it was a good ending so I don’t fault the author but the ending that I had in my head was totally better for me. LOL I would recommend this story to anyone.

Such a sweet, lovely absorbing teen story. 

Many thanks to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for my ARC. All opinions are my own.