ARC Review: Dare You To by Katie McGarry

Dare You To by Katie McGarry
Published: May 28, 2013
Publisher: Harlequin Teen
Pages: 479
Series: Pushing the Limits #2
Source: Netgalley
My Rating: 4 of 5 stars

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...

My Review: After reading Pushing the Limits and seeing the high ratings for this book I thought I would be blown away by it. It is very possible that my hopes were just too high for this book because I ended up enjoying it less than the first one.

This is not a light contemporary read. It was actually very dark. There's a lot of tough subjects in this book like drugs, alcohol, and abuse. There is also sex so this isn't a book for young readers (and when I say young I mean like younger than 13). I really liked how the book handled those subjects and I thought that all the characters were very realistic.

Beth is first introduced in Pushing the Limits but the first book is about Echo and Noah so not much about her is revealed. I don't remember what I thought of her character before, but I ended up really liking her as a main character. Her story almost made me cry. The one thing that kind of bugged me was that she couldn't let herself be happy but that's sort of expected since her entire life has been horrible. Out of the two main characters I definitely liked Beth more.

Ryan is the other main character and I had a few issues with him. During the first couple pages Ryan and his friends have this dare about who can get the most phone numbers from girls. Basically the guys flirt with girls, get their phone number, and then forget about them. I'm not exactly okay with that but that's not the part that really bothered me. My problem was that Ryan is all about respecting women yet he goes around getting phone numbers from random girls because of some dare. That doesn't sound very respectful to me.

Obviously Ryan and Beth fall in love. When I first found out about Ryan I was confused. What happened to Isaiah? As the story progressed I realized that even though I love Isaiah, I could not picture Beth with him. There's kind of a love triangle because Isaiah says that he's in love with Beth but it didn't bother me at all. It is very obvious who Beth ends up with.

Many lines from this book were also pretty corny. Almost every single time Ryan and Beth were together Ryan would continuously tell Beth that he loves her. The first few times were sweet but after awhile I started to wonder if the word love was the only word in Ryan's vocabulary. That word was said so much and each time it was said it started to be less powerful.

I ended up enjoying the book despite the issues I had with Ryan. Out of all the characters I think I liked Logan and Scott the most. I loved how Echo and Noah made appearances in this book. I was hoping that they would show up and I was so happy when they did. I can't wait for Isaiah's book!