Review: Dare You To by Katie McGarry

Title: Dare You To

Author: Katie McGarry

Publisher: HarlequinTEEN

Publication Date: 5.28.2013

Pages: 462

Genre: Contemporary, Romance

Series: Pushing the Limits #2

Source: eARC from publisher

Rating: A+

Summary (from Goodreads):

If anyone knew the truth about Beth Risk's home life, they'd send her mother to jail and seventeen-year-old Beth who knows where. So she protects her mom at all costs. Until the day her uncle swoops in and forces Beth to choose between her mom's freedom and her own happiness. That's how Beth finds herself living with an aunt who doesn't want her and going to a school that doesn't understand her. At all. Except for the one guy who shouldn't get her, but does....

Ryan Stone is the town golden boy, a popular baseball star jock-with secrets he can't tell anyone. Not even the friends he shares everything with, including the constant dares to do crazy things. The craziest? Asking out the Skater girl who couldn't be less interested in him.

But what begins as a dare becomes an intense attraction neither Ryan nor Beth expected. Suddenly, the boy with the flawless image risks his dreams-and his life-for the girl he loves, and the girl who won't let anyone get too close is daring herself to want it all....

Review:

There aren’t enough synonyms for love to adequately convey my utter adoration of Dare You To. In this stunning follow up to last year’s debut novel, Katie McGarry again blew me away. In fact, possibly more so than she did with Pushing the Limits. In Dare You To she did the impossible—she made me like Beth.

Beth is a broken, tortured girl and I get that now. When I was reading about Beth in Pushing the Limits, she irritated me to no end. I thought Noah and Isaiah—especially Isaiah—deserved so much better. And the way she treated Echo infuriated me. I wanted to slap Beth repeatedly and that caused me to hesitated over reading this (mind you I only hesitated for 1.5 seconds because I realized Katie McGarry was writing it and I trust Katie’s writing skills implicitly).

Getting into Beth’s head in this book was equal parts horrifying and amazing. McGarry writes stunning, compelling characters and Beth is no exception. She shines in this book, and now I get it. I get all the hatred and the bitterness and the desolation. I can’t imagine living in the gray world Beth did where hope was a cruel thing quickly snatched away. This girl has serious issues.

Enter Ryan. OK, no one hurt me, but I think I may love Ryan more than Noah. The way Ryan treated Beth and respected her (and all women) made me melt. I know a lot of people are up in arms because “Beth is supposed to be with Isaiah!” but trust me—Ryan is so much better for her. He balances her darkness with his light. He is the epitome of the knight in shining armor. Watching him fight for Beth was magical.

In case you can’t tell, I love this book. I love these books. McGarry is a force to be reckoned with in the YA world, and this incredible follow up proves she isn’t a one-hit-wonder in the book world. I can’t wait to read Isaiah’s story in a few months, and I can’t wait to read whatever she throws my way in the future.

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