Ray spends a lot of time at the gym. Gradually, his training becomes an obsession: he wants maximum muscle and zero fat, carefully controlling both his diet and workout routines. Even when his friends and girlfriend\u2014supportive or perhaps toxic, it\u2019s hard to tell\u2014try to warn him, he insists everything is under control. But things eventually spiral too far. This book is part of the Quick Reads 2026 series, so it is a very short and accessible read. I didn\u2019t really connect with the bodybuilding storyline, but I did enjoy picking up a few expressions of Multicultural London English.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“First thing every morning I step on my scale. I have to put it in the same place in the kitchen otherwise the reader gets a bit weird. All over my house the floor is uneven, and the kitchen, with tiles and all the rest, is the only place where it feels level. I didn’t expect the numbers to be down because the alcohol makes me hold water. So yeah, I was up. By like 4lbs! Bruh, I nearly dashed the scale into the fridge. That shit drives me fucking nuts. True, I know the reason and it all makes sense but seeing it just pisses me off. Like the scale is trying to mock man or something.”<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ray spends a lot of time at the gym. Gradually, his training becomes an obsession: he wants maximum muscle and zero fat, carefully controlling both his diet and workout routines. Even when his friends and girlfriend\u2014supportive or perhaps toxic, it\u2019s hard to tell\u2014try to warn him, he insists everything is under control. But things eventually […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22005,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[291],"tags":[56,249,64],"class_list":["post-21981","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books-2026","tag-death","tag-grit","tag-madness"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/victor-freitas-Pnm-9vBEQhk-unsplash-scaled.jpg?fit=2560%2C1706&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21981","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21981"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21981\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22004,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21981\/revisions\/22004"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22005"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}