* * * *
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....
Review:
When I read the teaser to Dare You To (at the end of Pushing the Limits) I knew that I was going to love this story. In those few pages we get an entertaining glimpse of Ryan’s cocky and persistent attitude as well as Beth’s twisted and bad ass sense of humor. But those were just small pieces of their personalities.
When Beth takes the fall for one of her mom’s many mistakes, her estranged uncle swoops in to save her from spending time in juvenile detention. Saving her includes separating her from her old life and old friends and taking her to a small country town outside Louisville to start out fresh. Beth is understandably resistant. She doesn’t want to leave her friends. She doesn’t want to live with the uncle that abandoned her. And she is worried because there is no one else to take care of her mom. But she has no choice. She has to stay until she can find a way to take her mom away from Louisville and the dysfunctional and dangerous life she lives there. Not long after arriving in Groveton, she meets Ryan - the jock that, as part of a dare, asked for her number. Soon she finds herself growing close to Ryan and making new friends - which makes her wonder if she really should run back to her old life.
Ryan is surprised to find out that his hero, MLB player Scott Risk, has moved to Groveton. He is even more surprised that he has been asked to show Scott Risk’s niece around. What he would have never expected is that said niece is the girl that made him lose a dare. And he NEVER loses a dare. Ryan doesn’t like to lose at anything. But before long, losing that dare doesn’t matter. He and Beth are reluctantly drawn to each other. He seems to provide her some stability and she is the one person that knows his family secrets and understands why everything is not as perfect as everyone else seems to think it is. When it looks like Beth might leave, Ryan’s tenacious “I Never Lose” attitude comes into play while he tries to win the one thing he knows he can’t lose.
I truly enjoyed this story. There was amazing chemistry between Beth and Ryan. Not just sexual but emotional as well. Ryan was my favorite kind of hero. He was the modern forever boy. And we all know how much I love forever boys. But what I loved most was one of the things I loved about Pushing the Limits. Katie McGarry does such a wonderful job at showing you that not everything is black and white. That everyone has been damaged by something and that the bad guy isn’t all bad and the good guy isn’t all good. This comes through in all her characters – main, secondary, old and young. Just because you hate someone in the beginning doesn’t mean you won’t love them - or at least understand them – in the end.
Dare You To is a wonderful story. If you enjoyed Pushing the Limits, you will definitely enjoy this one as well.
Dare You Too will be released May 28, 2013.
Nat
