Book Review: Crash Into You by Katie McGarry

At First Sight: Isaiah Walker needs money if he wants to keep on living with his best friend Noah, as he waits to age out of the foster care system and to graduate high school, he doesn't want to go back to live with his foster parents or to be sent to a new foster home if the state discovers he hasn't been living with them for months. So he's willing to do something he swore he would never do: illegal drag racing. Just for a night, just to keep himself afloat.

Rachel Young is tired of having to pretend to be someone she's not in order to make her mom happy, but her whole family depends on it, as she's the only one who can keep her mom from wallowing in the lost of her first daughter Colleen, who died before Rachel was even born. Having to be perfect for her mother all the time, and being over protected by her four older brothers, has left Rachel with a propensity to have panic attacks (which she always hides from everyone). The only thing that makes Rachel feel like herself is driving her mustang as far as she can.

When a drag race gone wrong leaves Isaiah and Rachel both in danger and indebted to a local criminal, their lives become deeply entangled.

Second Glance: I don't think I'm doing a good job of summarizing this book, but I've been trying all afternoon and this is as good as it got. I really don't want to give much of the story because I found it pretty interesting and entertaining. And what I said, it's really just the first, say, quarter of the story.

Crash Into You jumps right in to tell Isaiah and Rachel's story, and I really liked both of them. Isaiah has a lot of anger but he's very loyal to those he loves and really wants to make something of himself, even if his aspirations aren't the same as Noah's. Rachel is stuck with a life that makes her really unhappy, her family loves her but they are also very selfish and expect her to be Colleen 2.0 so her mother can be functional and happy, and they pretend not to see how much that's hurting Rachel.

Isaiah and Rachel are very different, but find comfort in each other. To Isaiah, who hasn't experienced many good things in life, Rachel is like an angel who loves cars as much as he does, and who accepts him for who he is - scary tats and piercings and all - while Rachel sees Isaiah as the one person who likes her for herself.

They are both messed up in different ways but together they make each other better. And I love when I find that in a story.

Plus, in the background, we got plenty to keep us interested as the story progresses, Isaiah's mom is trying to return to his life, and his social worker Courtney is determined to make him deal with her; Beth's four brothers are a bit messed up in their own ways, and Noah and Echo (from Pushing the Limits) are still around, struggling with their own issues, but happily together.

And then there is Abby. I love Abby. I haven't loved a secondary character this much in a really long time and I hope I get to read her story sometime.

Bottom Line: In my opinion, Crash Into You was worlds better than Dare You To, I kind of liked it as much if not better than Pushing the Limits. I was frustrated by the story sometimes, but the characters always made sense and sounded true to themselves, and the story kept the tension going until the end. All in all, a win in all accounts. 

1/2 

Speed Date: Dare You To by Katie McGarry

Have I mentioned how much
I don't like this cover? Because I Don't

The Plot: After taking the fall for her alcoholic mother (who trashed her boyfriends' car), getting arrested and ultimately sent (or dragged) off to live with her Uncle Scott in a town outside Louisville, Beth isn't having the best start to her senior year, as she's forced to leave Noah and Isaiah - the only people she could rely on during the last few years - and move in with the Uncle who abandoned her once before and his hostile wife. 

There is also Ryan Stone, best high school pitcher in the State and Scott's next door neighbor... who also happened try to get Beth to give him her phone number a few days before, on a dare. Beth doesn't like jocks, she was badly burned by one before, and she doesn't like that, deep down, she kind of likes Ryan anyway.

Ryan has plenty on his plate too... his parents are fighting all the time since Ryan's older brother Mark came out to them at the beginning of summer, and their dad kicked him out; and now both mom and dad spend their time pressuring Ryan to do what they want - Mom wants him to return to his old girlfriend Gwen, never mind that she dumped him, Dad wants him to abandon everything that won't mean he'll turn Pro once he graduates high school, like college and his other talents. 

For Ryan, Beth is prickly and complicated and he wants to be with her, dare or no dare. 

First Date: All right... this set up is taking for freaking ever, but I got it. Ryan is a spineless wonder when it comes to his parents, Beth is a scared little girl acting tough. Gotcha. 

Second Date: I have to say that I like Lacy, but by GOD if I were her I would have slapped the crap out of boyfriend Chris long ago, he of the stupid dares and who never knows when to shut up. Also, Beth is acting dumb. Sure, give your drug addicted and alcoholic mother all your money and your trust, that's SO going to work out well, dumb ass. 

Third Date: Sigh, I can't help feeling like that was a) way too long, b) anticlimactic as hell, and c) kind of predictable and boring.

Relationship Status: It's best if we don't see each other for a while...

Okay, so, last year when I read Pushing the Limits, I really liked it, the way secrets were kept and the dual point of views that helped to keep things moving at a brisk pace even though the book was a bit on the long side.

In Dare You To, that dual voice just make everything so slow, as both Beth and Ryan kept going over the same stuff over and over and over in their heads.

Neither of them started well with me, Ryan with his stupid dares and his "I don't lose"; and Beth with her stringing Isaiah along, willfully blind and TSTL ways - for someone so "tough" she has an impressive lack of survival instinct. 

Ryan redeemed himself for the most part, but just barely. Beth, though? not really. Maybe I'm a bit hard on her but she made no sense to me. And there were plenty of ways to make her side of the story better, if it had explored her relationship with Scott and Lacy, for example, if they had shown more about Allison - Scott's wife - who goes from hating Beth to embracing her with no in between or character development whatsoever - if she had had a transformation that wasn't "Oh, I'll decide to behave different today."

So yeah, we won't be riding into the sunset together and I'm going to take a break before I tackle Isaiah's book Crash into You.
1/2

What's a Book Speed Date, you ask? It's a quickie review--about 150 words or so--of any genre book (variety is the spice of life, after all).

If you want to join in or just read other speed date reviews, check out The Book Swarm

Book Review: Pushing the Limits by Katie McGarry + A Giveaway

I love this cover*

At First Sight: Entering the second semester of her last year of high school, the last place Echo wants to be is at the office of yet another psychologist, particularly because this one, Mrs. Collins, is school/court mandated.

Two years ago, Echo had the perfect life: popular, pretty, with an equally popular and handsome boyfriend and good friends, but then something happened toward the end of her sophomore year, something she can't really remember even as she lives with the scars said event left behind; and nothing has been the same ever since. 

To top it all off, her former babysitter turned nanny turned stepmother is pregnant and her super strict father has a tendency to put Ashley's feelings above everyone else's, even Echo's. 

On the other hand there is Noah, who has been bouncing around in foster care ever since his parents died a few years before. He has been separated from his two little brothers and wants nothing more than have them with him again, to have his family back. 

He is in court/school mandated counseling with Mrs. Collins too, but he has been screwed over by the system so much that he has given up on it. But Mrs. Collins is not ready to give up on him and that's how Noah very reluctantly finds himself being tutored by Echo, in exchange of Mrs. Collins helping him get more time with his siblings. 

Their first few meetings don't go well, as both of them have many preconceived notions about the other, and about how others view them, but they keep running into each other and soon start to see beyond their first impressions. 

Second Glance: I didn't want to give too much away in the summary, so I hope I didn't. Pushing the Limits was a bit of a surprise for me, but in a very good way. I don't usually like books that are very hyped about or I like them but not as much as everyone else, so when I saw the amount of good reviews this book had gotten, I got nervous. 

This was, however, one of those times when the hype was completely justified! Pushing the Limits is an intense story that left me book-hung over - it took me a few days to start another book once I finished this one because I just didn't want to leave Noah and Echo. 

Both of them were amazing characters and I felt deeply for the things that had happened and were happening to them. In someways, Echo and Noah had lost everything before meeting each other and were desperately trying to find something that felt like normalcy, without much success. 

Neither of them wanted a relationship but that's how they started to find some peace. They made mistakes - many of them - but they made sense for their ages and backgrounds. And I loved that while Noah could be a big jerk at times, he understood he was being a jerk, he wasn't all "What did I do?", he knew. 

I also loved he secondary characters like Beth and Isaiah, Noah's best friends and sort of foster siblings, who are there for each other no matter what. And Echo's brother Aires - even though he's dead he sounds like a great guy.

I didn't like Echo's friends, they were annoying and mean, but oh well. Other than that and the fact I felt  the story went around in circles a little in the middle, it was a great book. 

Bottom Line: From page one, Pushing the Limits got a hold on me and didn't let up, not even after I finished the book. It has memorable characters in complicated situations, yet I didn't find the book to be depressing, even at it's darkest moments, and it wasn't melodramatic. But it was a powerful story and one of my favorite reads of the year so far. 

Favorite Quote: "Keep it up, Echo. I'm all about foreplay."  - Noah

* Love the US cover because it fits the tone of the book and how the characters are supposed to look like!

Now, onto the promised Giveaway!

Rules:
Must be at least 13 years old to enter the giveaway
US/Can Only
No need to follow this blog to enter.
Please note that the prize will be shipped directly from Harlequin Teen.

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Thank you Harlequin for the Giveaway copy!