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Sunday, 26 July 2015

Brianna Reviews // Dare You To by Katie McGarry #2

Published:  22nd May 2013
Publisher: MIRA Ink
Format: Kindle
Synopsis: Ryan lowers his lips to my ear. "Dance with me, Beth."
"No." I whisper the reply. I hate him and I hate myself for wanting him to touch me again....
"I dare you..."

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....


I have to admit my first thought when picking this book up to read was “urgh a whole book about Beth”, as Beth was definitely not my favourite character in Pushing the Limits. So I guess the question is why did I read it, and the answer is that I loved Pushing the Limits and Katie McGarry’s writing so much that despite Beth being the main character I was willing to give it a go – and I’m glad I did.

So this is a sequel to Pushing the Limits, but only in the sense that it takes place in the same ‘universe’, it takes place after pushing the limits and Noah, Isaiah, and Echo all appear; But Dare You To could be read stand alone.

It’s almost two stories in one, one is Beth’s story and the other is Ryan’s story it just happens that they are intertwined.
Beth has to leave Noah and Isaiah and move away to a new place away from everything she know, although not everything as she reconnects with an old friend, Lacy. Here she meets Ryan (technically she met him before moving) and he is unsurprisingly a typical Jock, or at least that is what she and many other see, but Ryan likes to write and he’s gifted at it. It’s a love story I’m sure you can figure the rest out.

The basics of the story line isn’t complicated, (but then there are only 7), girl meets boy, but again like Pushing the Limits, its everything else that Katie McGarry packs in around it. This is not really a love story, it more about working out who you are. 
Beth is trying to work out how she fits into the new life she finds herself in, she also has the opportunity to start again and reinvent herself, but will she? Beth is struggling against herself to work out who she is, and whether she can let people see who she is. Ryan on the other hand, is still trying to work out who he is but he is struggling against trying to be the person other people want him to be and the person he wants to be; He loves baseball, he’s great at it, and his dad approves, but he also loves writing, again he’s great, only this time his dad doesn’t agree. In the end they help each other to work out who they are.

I love that Noah, Isaiah, Echo and even Rico make reappearance in this, and it’s interesting to see them from Beth’s perspective. I have to say I love Scott, I think he’s the right mix or stern and laid back and most of all I love the way he tries with Beth, yes he doesn’t get it all right and he admits that but he tries which is the most important part. I also love Lacy and Chris for being so accepting of everyone and thing, they are the sort of friends you need in life.

I would definitely recommend this book, to anyone, to everyone.  Even though the end is somewhat predictable, while reading the end feels like anything but a sure thing. 

Understandably as its written half from Beth’s POV Dare You To gives an insight into Beth, and why she is the way she is, and it turns out that I don’t actually dislike Beth once I got to understand her, she’s still by far not my favourite.  And for anyone who is worried about Isaiah and his inevitable heartbreak at Beth leaving, he is third in line and meets someone he truly loves in the next book in the series: Crash into You


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