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Slammed by Colleen Hoover

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Following the unexpected death of her father, 18-year-old Layken is forced to be the rock for both her mother and younger brother. Outwardly, she appears resilient and tenacious, but inwardly, she's losing hope.
Enter Will Cooper: The attractive, 21-year-old new neighbor with an intriguing passion for slam poetry and a unique sense of humor. Within days of their introduction, Will and Layken form an intense emotional connection, leaving Layken with a renewed sense of hope.
Not long after an intense, heart-stopping first date, they are slammed to the core when a shocking revelation forces 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 secret that keeps them apart.

p/s: Sorry if I come across as a very, very stingy person. I'm just flipping poor. A student, get it? Hence, no moneiz. Heeeeee

The Five Stages of 'Rejoice, rejoice all around because I found a good book through Goodreads'.

1. Denial

This happened back in early May 2012. I need to give Larissa credit for introducing me to Slammed because she's my first Goodreads friend who've read this book. She said that this book made her cry and she never cried over a book before. I was intrigued, but being me, I am never so much of a contemporary reader. Plus, the title, the cover and the blurb didn't drawn me enough. But come on! Although the rating was exceptionally high at that point, there were only like, 40 reviews in total! So, I decided to let it pass.

Back in August, I've seen one after another 5-stars rating for this book. But the true turning point was when I saw Slammed on Netgalley as an auto-approve title. But being me, I'm still skeptical. I mean, if Simon & Schuster could take over and publish Beautiful Disaster (the horror!), then I thought S&S wanted to do the same with Slammed because it was intensely hyped, not because it's a quality read. Heh! So, I requested Slammed only, thinking I won't want to read Point of Retreat afterwards.

*Shakes head* Egocentric Zuleeza.

Now the sequel is sold for $9 instead of $0.99.

I feel like punching myself in the face. EDIT: Strangely I could find Point of Retreat when derping around the new Netgalley.

2. Anger

Dude, have you heard that people's saying Taylor Swift is like the sober version of Ke$ha?

Slammed is like the sober version of Obsidian initially. You know...a girl with her single mom, moves to a new town, meets a hot male neighbour. Not that it angered me, I was just thinking 'this is Deja Vu. Hmm...proceed'.

The thing that angered me was, how quickly this book stole my heart without even trying so hard. Usually, it takes a kick-ass heroine, an intricate plot, a powerful imaginary world to impress me. But this book has none of those! In fact, it has the big no-no element in YA books; insta love. Yes, Layken and Will freaking kissed in Chapter Two, just when the story starts moving. How did I feel about that? I wished they kissed sooner LOL!

But, by the end of the story, I asked myself again, was it really an insta love? I personally think it wasn't. Because the time they spent away from each other was the moment that they learnt to love each other, not the time when they were together at the beginning.

Here's the peculiar part. I'd call Slammed formulaic and cliche. Is that a bad thing? Of course it is for other books but Colleen Hoover had done the impossible. If someone tried to tell me the whole storyline, I'd say 'Geez...I've heard that kind of forbidden love since I was in kindergarten. And the author expects that if she threw terminal illness into that mix, I would break down and cry?'.



Seriously, this is a book you need to experience it by yourself.

3. Bargaining

Once I finished Slammed, I was certain that I really need to punch myself for not requesting Point of Retreat. I went to Bookdepository.com, it was sold for around $14 for a paperback. Sheesh, that's kind of expensive for a Bookdepository book standard. They let you pre-order the other version of paperback for cheaper price but I have to wait. No, are you kidding me? And I'm not going to spend $9 for an e-book!

I decided to let it go for now.

Hmm...now that I think about it, I actually have a fear of Book 2. I'm afraid Book 2 is not as good as its predecessor. So yeah, I need to let my fangirling over Slammed settles down a little bit before jumping to Point of Retreat.

4. Depression

So the ending was very heart-moving. I actually had braced myself but it was really touching...no point in denying what I felt. But the problem with having a non-reader best friend is that she doesn't understand? Like all I wanted to do was to hide under my quilt and cry myself to sleep. But she didn't let me!

Of course I won't tell her why I was depressed last night because it's just too embarrassing. Heheh.

5. Acceptance

Wow. I just never felt this way about any books before. I respect every single characters in this book. I like Will. Very much. But I don't feel right making that exploding ovaries joke because I feel like Will belongs to Layken and Layken only? Weird, I know.

There are just so many things I like about this book;

The slam poetry, the lung cancer Halloween costume, the 'I don't think that's a good idea', the 'of course I let him kiss me', the backward day, the basagna, the inhabitant, the Avett Brothers song lyrics and the Chuck Norris jokes...

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