Yash is a super-jock. That’s an understatement, he’s a hero. He’s so good that even though he’s only in eighth grade, he’s been playing on the JV teams. He missed out on eighth-grade PE to go to the high school for JV practices. Unfortunately, he needs his eighth-grade PE credit to go to high school. That means he has to retake the class. In summer school!

All summer long, Yash will be stuck in the hot school with his fellow so-called “slugs”, the nickname for the summer school PE kids: Kaden who’s a genius when it comes to math and science, but hopeless when it comes to anything physical, twins, Sarah and Stewart who are too busy trying to kill each other to focus on PE, Jesse, your typical prankster, Arabella who’s obsessed with fairness, and Cleo who is secretly an amazing athlete but has sworn off sports.

Their teacher, Mrs. Finnerty seems anything but qualified to teach PE. She’s a retired home economics teacher and an amazing baker, but her idea of physical education is having the kids play games like duck-duck-goose. 

Yash is devastated to be missing the summer football workouts at the high school, and things get even worse when he finds out about a new member of the high school football team, Nate, who’s destined to be a superstar and fighting to be a quarterback – Yash’s position.

Yash is determined to compete in the summer flag football tournament, even if he has to find a new team. With some clever thinking and epic teamwork, Yash might just find a way through this awful summer.

Although this was a great book, at different points throughout this book, there were times when I thought numerous of the characters were annoying. For example, the main character, Yash, is full of himself. I thought that besides that, it was a great book, and at the end of the book, Yash did a great job redeeming himself. I thought the ending was very powerful, and all the characters learned important lessons.

Gordon Koman’s Slugfest is an exciting, humor-filled sports book you won’t want to miss!