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Slingshot

A Novel

Mercedes Helnwein

Wednesday Books

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opens in a new window Slingshot Download image

ISBN10: 1250253004
ISBN13: 9781250253002

Hardcover

352 Pages

$18.99

CA$25.99

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"I didn’t think it was going to be anything like this when I finally fell in love. I thought it was going to be pretty simple. Like, I’d love someone and they’d love me. I thought that’s the way it worked.”

Grace Welles is stuck at a third-tier boarding school in the swamps of Florida, where her method of survival is a strict, self-imposed loneliness. And it works. Her crap attitude keeps people away because without friends, there are fewer to lose.

But when she accidentally saves the new kid, Wade Scholfield, from being beaten up, everything about her precariously balanced loner world collapses and, in order to find her footing again, she has no choice but to discover a completely new way to exist.

Because with Wade around, school rules are optional, weird is okay, and conversations about wormholes can lead to make-out sessions that disrupt any logical stream of thought. Nothing’s perfect, but that’s not the point. When they're together everything seems uncomplicated in a way that Grace knows is not possible.

Except it is.

So why does Grace crush Wade’s heart into a million pieces?

Acidly funny and compulsive readable, this debut is a story about two people finding each other and then screwing it all up. See also: soulmate, stupidity, sex, friendship, bad poetry, very bad decisions and all the indignities of being in love for the first time.

Reviews

Praise for Slingshot

"All the terror and wonder of that first true love, masterfully detailed with true emotional rigor and blinding wit. My fifteen-year-old self wants to scream into a pillow with joy."—David Yoon, The New York Times bestselling author of Frankly in Love

"Glittering and irreverent, Helnwein has crafted an iconic character for the ages in sharp-tongued iconoclast, Gracie Welles. Beautiful prose, characters that breathe, and a voice so thick you could swim in it—I am fully here for this book."—David Arnold, The New York Times bestselling author of The Strange Fascinations of Noah Hypnotik and Mosquitoland

"Wildly real and bursting with all the romance and pain of coming into oneself."Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"Helnwein debuts in striking fashion . . . The writing, especially the dialogue, is magnetic, honest, and brimming with caustic wit . . . [an] enrapturing take on the intense highs and lows of teenage love."Booklist (starred review)

"Helnwein frankly conveys the joy, fear, and awkwardness of an all-consuming first love, poignantly depicting Gracie’s growth: particularly the hard-won knowledge that she can exist 'just by the sheer force of herself,' and the grace she learns to show herself and others."Publishers Weekly

BOOK EXCERPTS

Read an Excerpt

1


It was the last day before the Christmas holidays, and I sat in a bathroom stall at school dressed as a witch. The long, black fabric of my dress was trailing out under the stall door because of its ridiculous volume....

About the author

Mercedes Helnwein

Mercedes Helnwein is a visual artist and writer. She was born in Vienna, Austria, and grew up in Germany, Ireland, and partially the US and the UK. Instead of going to college she moved to L.A. where she began putting on art shows with her friends and selling her drawings. Her obsession with writing began at age ten when she wrote her first short story for a school assignment – The Celery Stick Who Became President. She currently lives and works in L.A. and Ireland. Slingshot is her debut novel.

Chris Watson