Monday, June 3, 2013

Dare You To by Katie McGarry

Published May 28th 2013 by Harlequin Teen

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....
Rating: 4/5

Review:

Dare You To is a companion book to Pushing the Limits (review).  It follows the story of Beth, a side character from Pushing the Limits, and Ryan, a new character introduced in this book.  You don't need to have read Pushing the Limits to follow this story, but I'd recommend doing so anyhow just because it's a really good book.

What I loved about this book are the same things I loved about Pushing the Limits - Katie McGarry has a talent for writing about individuals.  This isn't just the story of Beth and Ryan as a couple, it's also the stories of them seperately.  I love that they have their own lives and their own concerns apart from each other.

I had one big problem with this book, and that was that I didn't like Ryan very much.  I thought he spent most of the book being a jerk.  He does dares that are potentially hurtful to others just to impress his friends, he blames his brother for something his dad did, and he just has a bad attitude in general.  He turned it around by the end, and I was finally able to love him and Beth as a couple.

I decided to give this a 4 because even though I didn't like this book as well as Pushing the Limits, I thought it was still very good, and I was happy to see a story about Beth.  She was the character I wondered most about at the end of Pushing the Limits, and I'm glad to see her story resolved.

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