This wasn't a bad story, don't get me wrong, it was just kind of predictable and eh. The main character is Andrew Zansky, who weighs over 300 pounds as a sophomore in high school. He met a girl the weekend before school started back up, and then she shows up at his school. She says she likes people for who they are, not for being popular, but then, her actions don't back up her words. So, Andrew goes out for the football team instead of doing model UN with his best friend as they'd planned all summer. All of a sudden he's popular, but the girl is also getting popular, and she's in love with the star QB, who Andrew is friends with and helping with school stuff.
We do have a bit of a twist in my opinion when we find out there was some planning and that Andrew joining the team was kind of a plan by the coach and others. And like many other books I've read, the parents are having problems and getting divorced. Yeah, yeah, I know, lots of kids deal with that, I'm the child of divorced parents myself. But it would be nice once in awhile to have some happy parents, even divorced and remarried they could be happy parents, like mine were.
So this won't be a very high recommendation from me for the Gateway nominees.
