Dare You To (Review)

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Title: Dare You To
Series: Pushing The Limits #2
Author: Katie McGarry
Publisher: Harlequin Teen
Genre: YA Contemporary
Pages: 462
Goodreads
Buy: BD – Amazon – Harlequin
Source: NetGalley
Publication Date: 28 May, 2013
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.

My opinion

First of all, I have to say I absolutely love the cover. Just look at it, it's perfect (even if I didn't imagine Ryan and Beth physically like that).

“People laugh as I pass. They're judging me and their judgment is spot on. I don't belong here. I never have.”

Okay, so Beth is this broken-in-the-inside girl who plays the rude, tough i'm-not-scared-of-anything-and-i-don't-cry girl. She has her lost life in the ugly part of the city, she lives with her aunt, her two best friends Noah and Isaiah, and Noah's girlfriend, Echo. Her only living purpose is to look after her mother, who's an alcoholic and will go to jail if the police finds out everything about her. Beth's not sad with her life, she's in fact kind of happy with her friends and everything, but one day everything changes. She finds herself living with his uncle in this rural place for rich and perfect people she doesn't belong. She wants to go back to her life in Louisville, but she can't without risking her mom, so she decides to stay in that perfect place for perfect people.
Then there is Ryan, the oh-so-perfect baseball jock who loves crazy dares and wouldn't-in-a-million-years get interested in a girl oh-so-lame as Beth. But she's wrong, Ryan's not perfect and he IS interested in her, but she can't trust him at all, not when all the people she has ever trust had run away from her, not when his interest began with a dare, not when she has been hurt so many times she doesn't want to be hurt again.
And this is how all begins.

“It's an innocent kiss at first. Soft lips meeting; a gentle pressure that creates a slow burn. The type of kiss you give to someone that means something. This isn't the type of kiss to be wasted on me.”

The book is long. But it's so good that you don't see the end until you're in the last pages and you're like "Oh my God, it's going to end… and it can't end like this!" and you have to read it all.
It is narrated in first person by both, Ryan and Beth, and not much authors can do this without messing it all up, Katie really does something incredible and makes us understand both point of view in an amazing way. She's a really good author and I like how she describes everything, and she can change the narration depending on the character, like if you really were on other person's skin. She's really good.

“This overwhelming, encompassing feeling is love. It's not perfect and it's messy as hell. And it's exactly what I need.”

It all begins with a dare, and that's what I love about the book, it doesn't have one of those omg-so-slow beginnings, nope, this one goes straight into the action, but it doesn't give you much, so you are begging for more during all the book until you finish.
I really like Beth, sometimes she drove me out of my mind (especially with her mother), but as the book passes we all begin to understand her more and understand why she did all the things she did. I really loved her character, she handles things in an amazing way, she kept a lot of secrets and I understand her now, she's strong and brave, I really like that because half of the book was narrated by her, so I wouldn't have stand it if she was a stupid character.
Ryan, in the other hand, was really a jerk in the beginning, funny and hot, sympathetic and a good character, but a jerk. Beth changes him, a lot. One thing that I really didn't believe is him being such a gentleman, I mean… I don't think there are guys like him out there, but he isn't as fictional as other characters, there must be someone out there like him, hot and a gentleman, a really good guy that have it all but don't take it. Is because… he's too perfect to be real, but still I love him and as the book passes he gets to get my heart.
Him being too perfect and Beth being too broken is what I didn't got… they were a "couple" really weird, Beth didn't understand it either, but as I turned the pages, I begin to understand reasons, Ryan gave them to me.

“Guys like you don't fall for girls like me.”

As I said before, the book is loooong. But it really has its mean to be. And there wasn't a single part that I was bored saying something like "this is not useful for the book at all". The only thing that would have made me mad (really mad) was the incomplete story of Isaiah, but the next book is for him so I was happy.
I loved Lacy and Chris (the story of this tow intrigues me), Logan (I really want to know more about him) and Mark. Really great and believable characters.

“I convinced myself that everything was going to be okay. This is what happens when you believe in in hope. Karma comes around and destroy it.”

And… I have nothing else to say, beside some grammatical mistakes (everyone has them) the book is perfect. So yes, I recommend it to anyone that loves a good romance, YA book. In fact, I recommend it to everyone, this books is perfect♥

About the author
Katie McGarry was a teenager during the age of grunge and boy bands and remembers those years as the best and worst of her life. She is a lover of music, happy endings, and reality television, and is a secret University of Kentucky basketball fan.
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My rating