Dare You To - Katie McGarry

Pushing the Limits #2

Synopsis:

"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.

Part of me liked this book more than the first. Different main characters we meet Ryan a jock, baseball being his sport of choice. On the outside his life looks perfect. He is being scouted by Colleges and minor league baseball teams. But at home, his parents haven't slept in the same room in years and his father pretends Ryan's older brother, Mark,  doesn't exist since he came out the year before.

We re-meet Beth. Beth's life is a complete mess in every way. Her mother is an alcoholic and lets her boyfriends beat both Beth and herself. Beth spends most nights at her aunt's house where her best friend Isiah lives. Noah makes some appearances in this book. Noah and Isiah are the only stable thing in her life, until one night when Beth goes to check in on her mom and takes the fall for her after her mother takes a bat to her current boyfriend's car. Beth's uncle takes her in and moves her to a new town where she'll start a new school.

Beth and Ryan's first encounter started out as a dare, but he just couldn't get her out of his mind, so when Beth show's up in his school he makes a plan to finish the dare from getting her number to taking her out on a date. Only he got more than he bargained for when he fell for her.

Sort or a role reversal, not 'good girl falls for the bad boy" but more of a "Nice guy falls for the bad girl" Though Beth is hardly really a "bad girl". She was just dealt a shitty hand in life, and had to deal with responsibilities that shouldn't have been hers to begin with. I really liked seeing a more human part to Beth in this book. In the first book she was really... brash, in this book we really get to see a vulnerable side to her. Find out why she is the way she is, especially the way she was toward Echo.

If you liked Pushing the Limits, you will like this book.