Playing Chicken Summary

The book that I read is called « Playing Chicken ». It’s a novel written by Paul Kropp. The kind of story in the book is action and adventure, a perfect book for people of my age.

Josh, the principal character, is someone who doesn’t have a lot of friends. The only people he was hanging with was his cousin Dylan and, their friend Liz. One day, the though and popular guys invited him to their special party. He was hesitant at first but finally accepted the demand. At about 9 p.m he was out ! It was the best moment of his life ! He was finally free and alone and didn't have to care about his cousin Dylan who always follow him. Josh was drinking alcohol and having fun smoking illegal drugs. Since that day he became someone different. He’s new friends: Guzzo, Megan, Brandon, Shorty and Derek had a major impact on him. This teen was always drinking, taking pills, drugs and stealing his father’s car. Because his parents were always working, they couldn’t see what their child was doing.Josh just wanted to fit in with the guys. Well, maybe the gang did a few crazy things? But, hey, that's what fun's all about! Isn't it? So the party rolls on...until Guzzo dares Josh to a race that caused a deadly tragedy.

1

I really liked the book. It was actually interesting ! I would recommend this book to someone for three reasons. First of all, because there isn’t a lot of pages in this book so, it’s easy to read. You wouldn’t have to worry about reading fast. And, the words in this story isn’t so advanced so it’s easy to understand. Second of all, teens of these days, can really relate to the story. The way Josh turned out is a path that a lot of teens go through in middle school. And in the book it didn’t went so well so it is a great moral for us. Third of all, because they describe well the actions in the story. My favorite character in the book is Liz. I like her because, she was protective; she didn’t wanted him to go with the boys because she knew it would cause bad consequences. To continue, i like her because she isn’t so rancorous. Even if Josh caused death to three people, Liz didn’t blame him. To finish, the reason why she’s my favorite character, is because she was encouraging and helpful. While Josh was at the hospital and he didn’t wanted to try to walk, she was there for him and gave him to courage to stand up. We can found this in this passage of the book : « Liz persuades Josh to walk by telling him to have the guts to get on with his life and save lives by talking about how drugs, alcohol and driving don't mix. ». The character I dislike the most is Josh. I don’t like him because he is naive. He got manipulated really fast by the boys as we can see in the book :« Very quickly, Josh becomes involved with a group of kids who have no parental supervision; have ready access to cars, alcohol, and drugs ». He is also insecure because he wanted to show to the guys that he was cool, being himself wasn’t cool enough. If I could change the story, I would say that all of his new friends at the end start to go to a recovery center so there, they would talk about their bad habits in life and as time progresses they will

...