Mashup Book Review: Dare You To and Crash Into You by Kate McGarry

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Goodreads Blurbs:

Dare You To:

"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...."

Crash Into You:

"From acclaimed author Katie McGarry comes an explosive new tale of a good girl with a reckless streak, a street-smart guy with nothing to lose, and a romance forged in the fast lane. 

The girl with straight As, designer clothes and the perfect life—that's who people expect Rachel Young to be. So the private-school junior keeps secrets from her wealthy parents and overbearing brothers...and she's just added two more to the list. One involves racing strangers down dark country roads in her Mustang GT. The other? Seventeen-year-old Isaiah Walker-a guy she has no business even talking to. But when the foster kid with the tattoos and intense gray eyes comes to her rescue, she can't get him out of her mind. 

Isaiah has secrets, too. About where he lives, and how he really feels about Rachel. The last thing he needs is to get tangled up with a rich girl who wants to slum it on the south side for kicks-no matter how angelic she might look. 

But when their shared love of street racing puts both their lives in jeopardy, they have six weeks to come up with a way out. Six weeks to discover just how far they'll go to save each other."

Mashup Review:

Yay my first mashup review!!  Exciting right?!  So anyway, I decided to review these together because separately, I didn't have much to say for either of them.  But together it's a whole other story!

These two books are remarkably similar to each other and to the first book Pushing the Limits.  That's my main problem with this whole thing.  The first book was amazing, and then I read the second and third books and I thought it was deja vu or something!  So the guy has a problem, and then meets the girl and they fall in love against all circumstances.  Then, they help each other with their problems and it's the happily ever after at the end.

They are both wonderfully written books which is why I didn't rate them lower but their similarities definitely got to me.

Otherwise, I loved both of them!  In Dare You To, I loved Beth's growth throughout the book and how Isaiah complicated things (that was a nice change).  In Crash Into You, I loved how Ms. McGarry incorporated the cars and the extra element of danger as well as the incredible feels at the end.  I also loved how in Crash Into You Ms. McGarry made connections to the other 2 books.

The Final Verdict:

Dare You To and Crash Into You are both very well written books however they did seem to follow a cookie cutter in terms of the general plot.  By Crash Into You it was getting stale so that's why that one is one star lower.  They did have amazing elements in each of them though!

Dare You To: 4 stars

Crash Into You: 3 stars

Quotes:

Dare You To:

“You're a lot like that bird in the barn. You're so scared that you're going to be caged in forever you can't see the way out. You smack yourself against the wall again and again and again. The door is open, Beth. Stop running in circles and walk out.” 

“That must be love: when everything else in the world could implode and you wouldn't care as long as you had that one person standing beside you.” 

“How many more of us are faking the facade? How many more of us are pretending to be something we're not? Even better, how many of us will have the courage to be ourselves regardless of what others think?” 

“Silence. I hate silence. Silence means thinking and thinking means judgement.” 

“It's our rain, Beth.” 

“I walk with my head high, shoulders squared. I'm better than them. No matter the whispers and taunts they throw out. Fuck them. Fuck them all.” 

Crash Into You:

“When I’m with you, even my past seems like a bad dream,” he says. “I’ve sat on this hill a hundred times, and all I used to see were lights that represented places where I wasn’t wanted, where I never belonged. Now, when you aren’t with me, I look east and know one of those lights represents you, and I don’t feel alone anymore.” 

“I can’t give you the world, Rachel, but I’ll give you all I got.” 

“Maybe this is what happens when you fall in love. On the outside a lighter is nothing amazing, but it holds all the ingredients that can create something wonderful. With a few pushes in the right direction, you can inspire something so brilliant that it pushes back the darkness.” 

“Noah and I—we’re brothers despite not sharing blood, and Echo became my sister the day she put a smile on his face. They’re my family and I’m going to fight to keep what’s mine.” 

“I’m still not good enough for a girl like her, but she’s back in my life and she needs someone to protect her. I’ll fill the role and absorb as much of her light as I can before she leaves me behind in the darkness.”