Christina-+candy

= = ====Candy is a daring love novel which falls under the genre of teen fiction. a forbidden and naive romance, Kevin Brooks (author) portrays your typical boy-girl scenario with the dark details of a girl that had once been wealthy & happy, now dragged into the underworld and a young teenage boy who becomes infatuated with the drug addict and prostitute known as Candy.==== ====Addiction. Addiction plays a big part in the book, in fact its the thing that everything falls back on. Candy's addiction for drugs, Joe's addiction for the girl he had simply met on the street, and more. When Joe first sees Candy at the Train station he is hypnotized by her everything, her plump pink lips, her smokey eyes, her body, everything. After seeing each other multiple times sporadically Joe becomes more infatuated with her, ditching his band practices and school. After a very confronting man threatens and embarrassed candy in front of Joe, Joe puts the pieces together and comes to the conclusion candy was a prostitute and a heroin addict. Finding out you're with a girl involved in the underworld you would expect Joe to run, right? Wrong! He is in way to deep and thanks to Kevin Brook's detail on the vivid affection Joe feels for candy, you get a sense of what a naive boy will do to save the girl he loves from the cruel world known as the underworld.====

====The story is told from the main characters perspective, Joe Beck a 15 year old boy from the suburban towns of London. An extremely likable character who can be seen as awkward, quirky and amusing, Joe becomes a very real person who you can picture as the boy on the bus with his ear phones in listening to music, eyes alert to everyone and everything. A noticeable weakness shown in Joe is his habit to over think. His need to over think and have self conscious thoughts is cleverly portrayed. Linking arms with Candy, what should he do with his other arm "should i stick my elbow out? should i hold her arm? should i put my hand in my pocket?" the way Kevin Brooks uses small details to point out Joe's self conscious dithering is perfect.==== ====Candy being the alternative main character has a lack of control. Throughout her whole life Candy was a good looking girl, the girl every boy wanted and every girl wanted to be like. Puberty ended up doing her well and as she grew older she became the kind of girl men couldn't resist and girls would envy, the jealousy of her close friends deprived them to reject her. With her life going down hill from there Candy finds herself in between all the angst of the underworld. She becomes a heroin-addicted prostitute who is only dependent on the terrifying pimp who supplies her with drugs as she makes her way to toilets for regular fixes. Candy is beautiful, bright and sparkly with an attitude that comes off as care free but behind the beautiful looks and the care free attitude is a broken girl, desperate to be fixed.====

====I do not recommend Candy to anyone that does not feel comfortable with contents describing the underworld or people who don't enjoy suspenseful stories. Although the end of the book may seem like an unfinished plot, the last chapter was complete with meaning. Candy's awareness of her state is terrible to see, and the glimpses of her life are some of the most shocking scenes imaginable so i recommend it to people who are mature enough to handle mature scenes and who are deeply interested in the current society and how much corruption can happen on the wrong side of town. Kevin Brooks is undoubtedly a good novelist. He says, 'Enter their heads, live their lives for a few hours and ask yourself what you would have done. Are you stronger than love, passion, drugs, fear and brutality? You don't know whom you will fall for or what events will overtake you. How much control will you have?" I thoroughly enjoyed the book and became hooked on it because of its un usual twist on a teenage love story. Some words of warning: Candy may hook you too.'====