hiltzmoore 's review for:

Gold by Chris Cleave

3.0

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This was probably a 3.5 star book for me. I definitely appreciated what the author was doing, showing the ruthlessness of sport and whether that bitterly tough athletic drive that pushes Olympians to their best is essentially counterproductive to a successfull family life. However, the characters and situations felt pretty contrived to me. I did love the descriptions of the atheletes thoughts as they were beginning races, and found the psych-outs to be pretty brutal, but funny. It was really great to be reading a book about trying to make it to the London Olympics during the London Olympics (and about cycling, no less!). I was glad to win this from the Goodreads First Reads program.