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Gym Candy Review

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courtesy of good reads

Realistic Fiction/313 pages/2007

Gym Candy by Carl Deuker was an amazing book to read. It was an emotional rollercoaster from beginning to end. The main character was a very dynamic. This made the book even more interesting. I recommend you should read this book. The main character, Mick Johnson, loves to play football. He has been practicing and playing football since he was a little kid. His father was also a great football player. He made it to the NFL. Mick looks up to his father. One time, he was facing the highschool of FootHill. They were fighting for a playoff spot. Mick was playing very well until the end of the game. It was the last play, and he was one-on-one with a line-backer. He was stopped on the one yard line. That moment made him extremely sad. Because of this moment, he went down a bad path. This amazing book had almost everything. It had drama, sports, suspense, and action. The one thing the book lacked was humour.

In my personal opinion, this book a 4.5 stars because it had almost everything.

Book Club Reflection:

Our book club group was outstanding. It was a very good environment. Everyone contributed to the discussion and nobody judged anyone else. I liked how we all came to the meeting prepared. I believe that the format that we did the book club in was amazing. There was nothing to change. I would like to have us meet every other class. I believe the way students were held accountable was good. We should keep the blogs. Overall, I liked the way we did the book club group this time around.

Gym Candy Last Section

My group just finished the book Gym Candy by Carl Deuker. The book ended in a unique way which I personally  did not like. Mick started using XTR to do better in his games. Drew, his best friend, was suspicious of him. He saw his duffle bag in the bathroom and asked Mick if something was going on. Mick answered awkwardly and Drew still had his curiosity. Later that game, Drew got injured and went to the locker room early. He looked through Micks duffle bag and saw the XTR. He took it home with him and later, he called Mick. He told him to meet him to confront him. Mick brought a gun. Mick was going to suicide, but his hand was shaking so he shot himself in the wrong place. He went to a rehab so he could get better. We had a great discussion about the book and we were very productive. I had two discussion questions that created a lot of discussion. My first was

If the author was to keep writing this book, what do you think would happen next?

This question created the most discussion out of my two questions. One of my group members disagreed with the rest. He said Mick would get better and start playing football again. We said that it would take a long time to get back into football and he would probably stop for a long time. The other question was

Why didn’t Drew just give the duffle bag to the coach?

This question was also good; however, it wasn’t as good as my other one. We all agreed that he believed that Mick was his best friend and he wanted to do it personally. This book club discussion was very productive and although I didn’t like the ending, I loved the book as a whole.

 

Gym Candy Section 2 Discussion

Our group discussed section 2 of the book Gym Candy by Carl Deuker. Mick, the main character, starts to lift weights seriously. He goes to the gym, Popeyes, and he drinks protein powder. He invests $150 a month in protein powder that he can’t really afford. He works for his dad and he starts painting his house in order to afford the cost. One of the best questions we discussed was

What do you think Mick will do next?

This brought a lot of discussions. We all thought different things because there are many different directions. I believed that he might continue doing drugs just because he is so determined to do well in football. Some of my other book club members believed that he will realize his mistake and stop his addiction. Another interesting question that I presented was

Why do you think Mick turned to drugs even though he frowned upon it before?

We all came to the same conclusion; however, it took us some thinking for us to figure out. We, as a group, came up with the reason that he thought the other team was doing drugs, so he believed it was okay for him to do it.

I was surprised by the different points of view me and my other members had. I believed that we would have the same thought process for all the questions; however, that was not the case. I constantly found myself disagreeing with my book club members. I learned that people can think about things in a very different way. During the discussion, I was wondering about what would happen next in the book. I always saw myself trying to open the book so I could read on. I believe the actual discussion went extremely well. We were all so intrigued by the book, and we all wanted to talk about it. We also did a lot of things bad. We were constantly interrupting each other. We were all so eager to get our opinions out.