Effortlessly Reading

My Rating: 3.5 I've heard so many never-ending good things about Colleen Hoover's Slammed and what an awesome, terrific book it is. People were praising Slammed left and right, worshiping it, and recommending it to everyone. I'll be honest, I hardly read self-published books, especially New Adult self-published books, so when I heard about Slammed and how good it was, I was not so eager to give it a chance, but decided to anyway. The result? I enjoyed it, but I'm not really impressed by it. Before I started reading Slammed, I already knew that Slammed was focused on a student-teacher relationship, which was similar to Aria's situation in the first couple of books in the Pretty Little Liars series that I read in high school. I could only hope that Slammed didn't gross me out and make me want to throw the book against a wall. Thank goodness it didn't come to that. In fact, I suprisingly enjoyed reading Slammed, even though it featured a student-teacher relationship due to Layken and Will's unique circumstances. What I mainly liked about Slammed is Kel and Caulder, Layken and Will's younger siblings. Kel and Caulder literally brightened up the book for me and bought a lot of humor into it, especially in one of the scenes near the end of the book. It is safe to say that if Kel and Caulder didn't exist, I would probably be liking Slammed a lot less. The one and only thing that really annoyed me in Slammed is Layken, the main character and the person who is telling the story. She is just so annoying, narrow-minded, and just ugh! Her whole "carving the pumpkins" thing made me want to slap her and tell her to grow up already. I can't explain this any further or this review will contain some major spoilers, but all I can say is that Layken doesn't know how good she has it, especially when there are other characters she meets in the book that have way less. Despite how much I enjoyed reading Slammed, there is just something - I can't put my finger to what it is - but there is just something that prevents me from giving it a rating that's higher than a 3.5 star rating. Maybe it's because this student-teacher idea has been done already. Maybe it's because of Layken's attitude. Maybe it's because of the annoying italics that wasn't needed in chapter 20, pages 300 and 301 that just made a good speech feel weird. Maybe it's because I didn't truly feel Layken and Will's pain on not being together. I just don't know. Overall, sure, I'll recommend Slammed, but with a warning attached: if you won't enjoy reading about student-teacher relationships, then Slammed is definitely not the book for you. Otherwise, why not give Slammed a chance? Effortlessly Reading: Slammed