On this episode of Reading with R, Ruqayyah reviews the book Slammed by Colleen Hoover. The novel propelled her into the world of poetry, particularly slam poetry. Listen to the show to find out how? The views and opinions expressed on this podcast do not necessarily reflect that of Ayamba LitCast. Enjoy the show! IntroWell, hello there. Welcome back to another episode of Reading with R. It's your girl Ruqayyah, in your speakers every month, talking about books with you, her favourite thing to do. You can catch us on our website, Ayamba LitCast website, or Spotify or iTunes or Apple Podcast or Audible. Anything that is your favourite podcast listening app, whether just search Reading with R, or you could search Ayamba LitCast and listen to our other amazing shows as well. So, on today's episode, it is a Colleen Hoover special. Yes, Colleen Hoover, ladies and gentlemen. I think it's very apt that I start my very first Colleen Hoover review with my first ever Colleen Hoover book that I read. Which, coincidentally, was also her debut novel, 'Slammed.' Slam PoetrySo as the name implies, 'Slammed,' your heart will literally get slammed into when you read that book. Like, practically all Colleen Hoover books are like that. But, no, that's not why it's named 'Slammed'. It's named 'Slammed' because there's a lot of slam poetry in it. So, a funny story. That book was my introduction to slam poetry, spoken poetry as a whole. I had never heard of spoken poetry before. So, when I read that book and I saw that you could perform poetry, I was intrigued because you know, as your typical student in my junior classes, my lower-level classes. We had poetry as part of our English and it was all William Wordsworth, Shakespeare, you know. No shade to those guys, but like, you know how they go. And then our teacher was like, "Oh, we're doing the romantics." And in my head, I'm like, "Whaaat!? Are you sure this is an appropriate curriculum?" You know, teaching little kids, romance and lo and behold, I found out that apparently, romance meant love of nature. And I'm like, I can't believe how the world has evolved and what it has turned into these days. But anyway, back then when I was taking Shakespeare awards, William awards with all those, oldies, I convinced myself that I wasn't a poetry fan. That was what I told myself because it was so hard to understand. I didn't really get that you could just take only some of the figures of speech and do what you wanted with them. I thought poetry had to be complicated and just weird and just something I didn't get. So, reading Slammed, I could say opened up a whole new world to me because from there I found modern poetry, I started listening to spoken word poetry on YouTube and I was opened up to a whole new world. And I was like, I can't believe I used to say I don't like poetry, so yeah. Thank you, Colleen Hoover, you did that. You know, not just the world of spoken word poetry, Colleen Hoover, and the fandom has just been an amazing space. You know, recently I even saw a lady on Book Tok. She makes these mini books. You guys have to check that out. I think it's @TVandJohn on TikTok. She makes mini books, it's so cute. Honestly, she makes all these mini books and then she fills a jar with them. It's like her TBR or maybe books she has read. Anyway, it's a cool hobby. I've been saying I want to do that, but I haven't gotten around to it. I'll do that inshaallah. I know maybe we could do a mini-Reading with R library. You know, with mini books of all the books that we have reviewed. And, you know, if anybody wants to give me free books as well, I'm down for that. So, back to Colleen Hoover - Slammed. The best part about this is that. I read Slammed quite a while ago, but the main idea or like the shape of the story is in my head. Fortunately for everyone involved, I don't remember so much as to spoil it for everyone. So, like all Colleen Hoover books, it was a very real book. It was very heartrending.