Book Review: Dare You To by Katie McGarry – Simultaneously heartbreaking and uplifting.
Dare You To by Katie McGarry
Release Date: May 28, 2013
Genre: Young Adult, Fiction, Contemporary Romance
Available for Pre-Order: Barnes & Noble | Amazon
[rating=5]Synopsis:
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 .
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Katie McGarry‘s second book in the Pushing the Limits series is just as addictive as the first. I will admit to being apprehensive about this “sequel” in which Noah and Echo aren’t the focus, particularly as I wasn’t too attached to Beth in Pushing the Limits. Fortunately, Dare You To far exceeded my expectations.
I was also surprised – pleasantly so – that the story did not go as I thought it would as far as who her main “love interest” would be. Obviously, anyone who read Pushing the Limits would automatically assume the story would focus solely on Isaiah and Beth, but this new character Ryan really kept the story from being too predictable before readers even pick up the book.
As I mentioned, Dare You To is equally as addictive and intense as Pushing the Limits, and any young adult or new adult fan will really enjoy reading about Beth from her point of view. Unlike when the story was told from Echo and Noah’s point of view, readers really come to understand more about Beth, her personal life, and how she got to where she is today.
To be sure, this story is fairly predictable for the angsty-teen-with-a-bad-home-life plot that is so common with books in the young adult genre – and the “high school jock forsakes the in-crowd to pursue the loner” cliche is in full force. That said, let us also tell you that there is nothing repetitive [or boring, for that matter] about McGarry’s telling of it.
Dare You To manages to keep readers interested and emotionally invested in these characters. In all, McGarry has crafted a wonderful story that is simultaneously heartbreaking and uplifting, and we truly feel we cannot recommend this new book to you enough.