Ratings41
Average rating3.6
Eighteen-year-old Layken struggles with holding her family together after her father dies, until she develops a relationship with her new neighbor, Will, who has a passion for poetry slams and gives her a new sense of hope.
Series
3 primary booksSlammed is a 3-book series with 3 primary works first released in 2012 with contributions by Colleen Hoover.
Reviews with the most likes.
listened on audible
my late teens self wouldve loved this. but it's so cringe now lmao
i don't even know what the plot was, seemed like things were being just tossed into the story. and all the main characters had to do what communicate and 99% of the problems would've been solved.
This was an emotional book that had me hooked from the beginning. Lake and Will have such intense feelings for each other and the book is full of situations that challenge those feelings. The poetry slams throughout are also great.
Like many, I picked up this book because of the Goodreads-inspired notoriety that Colleen Hoover had been receiving. Somewhere around 7pm last night, I began to think I'd made a big mistake. 3 chapters in, this book was clearly not intended for 20-something males. My only Goodreads comment to that point? “Starting to feel like Twilight without sparkly vampires.” I seriously thought that I was going to have to bail out.
Around 1am, I finally, groggily, turned off my light and went to bed. In the 6 hours that had preceded, I had somehow, mysteriously, finished the book. I literally had not been able to sleep until I was done.
So what happened?
To be fair, Slammed is not the greatest work of fiction ever. There is a high degree of unbelievability (some might say Twilight-esque) in how quickly Lake, the main character, and Will, her “omgsohotz” neighbor fall in love. The story proceeds rather bouncily from junction to junction, dragging the reader along in the expectation that he will simply accept the characters and their current predicaments. All the common elements of the teenage love story - a love that society will not allow, a family dynamic that is all at once frustrating yet uber-advanced (including the proverbial wise sage of a younger brother), a rebellious, yet equally sagacious best friend, etc. - are present within the first few chapters of this book. Early on, I felt as though I could see every plot point and difficulty.
What transpired over the course of that 6 hours changed my mind. The biggest driver of that change: I got to see characters who were not all that different from me. No one had superpowers or mystical abilities; there was no omnipresent villain that everyone was running from (heck: apart from one exception, there weren't even overly ugly humanistic natures chasing after our heros). There was merely life, along with all of its joys and heartbreaks.
This book forces your soul to bare itself. Any author who can do that - even just a little bit - deserves recognition.
On to book #2.
beraktam ezt a könyvet a “nyál” elnevezésű kollekciómba a kobón, mert ilyen kis előítéletes vagyok, aztán meg jól meglepődtem. persze nyáladzás is van benne, elvégre is alapvetően ez mégiscsak egy szerelmes lányregény, de közben meg olyan mély, komoly érzelmeket pedzeget, hogy párszor már rendesen a sírás kerülgetett.
néha laykent, a főszereplő lányt szívesen orrba gyűrtem volna, de aztán elgondolkodtam, hogy noha kívülről szemlélve rettentően irritálóan viselkedett, belülről megélni mindazt, amin keresztülment azért teljesen más. meg hát én is rengetegszer reagálok irracionálisan sokkal kevésbé fontos és megrázó dolgokra. nem könnyű szembenézni azzal, hogy milyen visszataszító lehet ez, ezért próbáltam elnéző lenni vele szemben. ettól függetlenül nem a legfrankóbb karakter a történetben.
ha már belefutottam ebbe a slam poetrys sztoriba, végre megnéztem egy videót is a témában, hogy legyen valami fogalmam a dolgokról. nem tetszett. viszont a könyvhöz rengeteget ad hozzá, hogy e köré épül, írott formában sokkal jobban bejött.
a lényeg, hogy ugyan a szokásos vergődéssel tarkított, de annyira jól megírt, fontos dolgokhoz érdekesen nyúló regény a slammed, hogy egész bátran tudom ajánlani. azoknak meg főleg, akik szeretik is a slamet.
(jóhát, beleolvastam a negatív véleményekbe és lehet, hogy inkább mégsem ajánlom, csak legföljebb azoknak, akik komálják a szenvelgést.)