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@Jade—You speak like an author! I’ve got to think writers/singers/artists are sometimes surprised by which of their works “click” with their audience. I have read between the lines (so take this fwiw) that GRK intended SLACKER to be a standalone but it turned into an 8-book series because it was so well received… and maybe MAXX COMEDY and a few others didn’t take off as high as hoped. From a reader’s perspective, ISLAND and SCHOOLED and RESTART and THE FORT are ones that just so clearly were going to score, and SLUGFEST has (as @Shaleen might agree) the same super high-powered mega-bang vub (i.e., Oh, this is just great!).
As for whether Yash stays friends with Hammond and Amir… well, I may know more after finishing the remaining seven chapters, but right now I hope so. Middle school and early high school are a time of finding yourself and making new friends, but there’s a lot to be said for growing and adjusting your social group instead of replacing old friends with new ones. My best friends from sixth grade were not the ones I hung out with closely as an upperclassmen—but I’m glad to still have all of them in my life today, even if it’s just a connection and memory-sharing every few years.

@Shaleen—“Bella is turning out to be the star of the book”—I had to think about that for a bit. I haven’t read ahead but I noticed Chapter 24 is a Cleo entry again—meaning we have at least four perspectives (two of them Arabella’s) between the Yash chapters. It’s definitely not all about Yash. And you put into perfect words how I hope Cleo gets her own Korman moment sometime before the story ends!

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Back to a “slug” perspective in Chapter 23 (Arabella):
> I appreciate that GRK writes characters with complex, untraditional, complicated, and sometimes unsettling family dynamics. I will say some of his earlier books—where parents were “absent” only because the kids were up to shenanigans and adults were obscured in the background, not because they were neglectful or negligent—created a more complete “escape” from the real world for the reader, but I bet a lot more readers see themselves in his more recent characters.
> “Too bad summer school doesn’t offer classes in anger management.”   J
> The Slugfest uniforms: YES!! Well done, Coach Finnerty.
> So, Arabella has not been my favorite of the Slugfest characters, but my heart hurts for her after that disaster with Nate!