Slingshot
Mercedes Helnwein
352 pages
Wednesday Books, 2021
From Goodreads: Grace Welles had resigned herself to the particular loneliness of being fifteen and stuck at a third-tier boarding school in the swamps of Florida, when she accidentally saves the new kid in her class from being beat up. With a single aim of a slingshot, the monotonous mathematics of her life are obliterated forever…because now there is this boy she never asked for. Wade Scholfield.
With Wade, Grace discovers a new way to exist. School rules are optional, life is bizarrely perfect, and conversations about wormholes can lead to make-out sessions that disrupt any logical stream of thoughts.
So why does Grace crush Wade’s heart into a million tiny pieces? And what are her options when she finally realizes that 1. The universe doesn’t revolve around her, and 2. Wade has been hiding a dark secret. Is Grace the only person unhinged enough to save him?
I'll be blunt, I put off reviewing this book because it just wasn't for me. What I couldn't get over was the main character Grace. If there was ever a time a character's name didn't match her personality, this is it. I don't know if she was supposed to be one of those characters we love to hate, but there's nothing about her I liked, let alone loved. From the minute the book began she acted like a toddler having a hissy fit over something she couldn't have, but what's worse is that she she had a crush on her teacher and that is what she couldn't have. I have no problem with books where teachers and students have relationships - My Dark Vanessa is a great example of the topic well done - but Grace just comes off as delusional. Her reasoning for why she thought her teacher loved her back was flimsy at best, yet she ran with it. Her retaliation for his rejection was also extremely juvenile.
Fast forward to her relationship with Wade; she met him by saving him with her slingshot - one of the rare times the slingshot is even mentioned in the book. Wade was clearly good for Grace, he grounded her and she softened during their time together, but the whole time I couldn't help feeling she didn't deserve him. The way she treated him during Spring Break was sad. And as for Wade, he acts like he has a big secret and when we finally find out what that is his character makes much more sense. And that brings me to the gas station scene - the only scene in the whole book that felt real and made me want to keep reading. Unfortunately, the whole book fell limp after that and then it was over.
Egads. I'm not sure what to compare this book to or to whom to recommend it. Honestly, if you really want to read this go for it obviously, but if you're on the fence, just don't. This book will be released in April.
On an aside, I do want to bring up the book's Goodreads page. As of this writing, the reviews are skewed to either you love it or you hate it, there isn't much middle ground. Taking a closer look at the five star reviews we find typical advanced readers who rate five stars to kiss the publisher's butt and keep getting early copies, and then there are a lot of sock accounts purportedly by the author herself. Several accounts have no friends or are only friends with one or two other sock accounts, and they have all given the book five stars without an actual review. File this one under "authors behaving badly."
