Full review at Smart Bitches, Trashy Books 
 The Hurricane by RJ Prescott is aptly named: it's a book that's going to blow you strongly in one direction or another. I personally enjoyed the first three quarters of the book and the THE THING happened and it disappointed me immensely. 
 I'm fairly iffy on New Adult, largely because I think there's so much of it in the market right now that you have to filter through a lot of sub par writing to find the authors that really work. The Hurricane opens with the hero standing in the street, in the dark, with a boner, watching the heroine through a diner window, and at first I was like "Ohhh, shit. This is going to be another stalker-hero New Adult. Thanks Fifty Shades." I gave the book a chance though and was pleased to discover that despite the Boner Incident of Chapter One, the hero was not a creepy stalker dude, but actually a lovable character. 
 The Hurricane offers the fairly standard New Adult trope of Heroine with Tragic Backstory meets Guy Who Gives Her Pants Feelings, and they have lots of angst and orgasms and find True Lurve. The hero is also scarred but the pure white light that emanates from the heroine's inner goodness-and her vagina-makes him want to commit. It's actually a tremendously Old Skool plot line (which I am always down for). 
 Con, the hero I was loving so hard, called someone a fucktard. In fact, some of his friends used the word too. Ugh. Nope. 
 Admittedly, "fucktard" and "retard" (used pejoratively) are bugaboos for me. The word "fucktard" comes from "fucking retard," which is never, never an okay thing to say. I know a lot of people who have developmentally disabled children, I previously worked with the developmentally disabled, and my husband was labeled as DD or ED before his dyslexia was diagnosed in high school. I have heard the words fucktard and retard used in the harshest possible way and I've seen how cruelly it hurts people. 
 If I had to guess, I would assume the author didn't know how offensive this word is to a lot of people. I can see where readers might suggest that Con, growing up in a rough environment, might have heard that word hurled around a lot and wouldn't be sensitive to it. 
 Frankly, I don't care. 
 I want my hero to be better than that. I certainly wouldn't be cool with him throwing around a racial slur or saying "well, that's gay." There were so many other things Con could have said-asshole, asshat, douchebag, douchecanoe, douchewizard, goddamn-mother-fucking-son-of-a-bitch. The options are endless. There was no reason that "fucktard" had to be used. 
 So yeah, this is a huge hot-button topic for me. I'd personally be really happy to never read the word "fucktard" again in my life. As a result, I really struggled with what to give this book for a grade. The use of "fucktard" didn't completely ruin the story for me, but it did totally pull me out of the narrative and I had to pretend the hero never said that. It would also make me hesitant to read the author again, honestly. 
 - Elyse