Review: Crash Into You (Pushing the Limits #3) by Katie McGarry

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.

From Goodreads

Isaiah got his heart crushed by the one woman he thought he could trust. Having been abandoned by his mother & bounced around the foster system for years, he's a bit prickly. He's got a great family (meaning the people he has chosen as family) who will do anything for him, but that still doesn't make him any less intimidating. In walks the gal with a car he's drooling over & the attitude to go with it. Rachel is the token daughter in a family filled with secrets & lies. To escape the pressures at home, she speeds around in her Mustang. When things go sideways at the street race the night she meets Isaiah, nothing will ever be the same.

You guys know I love me some Katie McGarry books. As I said in my WoW yesterday, I may not be able to wait for the boxed set to buy this book. Isaiah has been my favorite character all along, so to have a book featuring him was almost enough to make me squeal. I couldn't have imagined it would get even better when we get introduced to Rachel.

Both of these teens are stubborn & hard-headed to their own detriment, but the benefit of others. They are loyal & trustworthy despite having shady tendencies. Getting to learn about their vastly different, yet eerily similar backgrounds was a lot of fun and made this a unique read. I don't know a lot about cars, but even I appreciated the muscle displayed during the racing & mechanic shop scenes.

McGarry has an entertaining writing style since we get the story from both perspectives. It would be repetitive if done by almost anyone else, but the lens she uses to show us the interactions is what really drives the story home for me. I adored getting to see the parts of these two characters that almost no one saw & how they allowed each other to see what they couldn't actually face themselves. 

While the romance was a little speedy in my opinion (I'm not a fan of insta-love because for me it's not very realistic) it worked well for how this story played out. There is definitely some language, violence, minor drug scenarios (although little to know actual usage mentioned), these things all served their purpose.

Personally, I am the biggest fan of the fact that Katie isn't afraid to break her characters; both emotionally & physically. You'll just have to read to find out what I mean. :)

ARC graciously provided by Around the World Tours

I sent this video to Katie since a lot of the lyrics remind me of scenes in this book & Isaiah in general. I know it's long, but it is well worth it. Enjoy!

Waiting on Wednesday: Crash into You (Pushing the Limits #3) by Katie McGarry

Waiting on Wednesday recognizes that we as bookies pine for books. This post is about what I am impatiently waiting for right now. It was started by Jill at Breaking the Spine.

So I think I'm finally starting to get the hang of this work/life/blog balance. Still not perfect, but I'm determined to get things situated. I'm really excited for my book this week (even though I just finished reading it). Crash into You (Pushing the Limits #3) by Katie McGarry is set for a November 26 release & I may actually buy this one. I was kind of hoping that they would make a box set of these books soon so I can just buy that, but this one might be too good to wait for that. Check out the summary below.

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.

From Goodreads

What I love about these books (and the Fairytale Retellings by Jackson Pearce) is that they are a loosely tied series. Not all characters are major players in other books & each book focuses on a different relationship. Of the three so far, I think this one is my favorite. I LOVE Isaiah & love that Katie isn't afraid to break her characters. Check back tomorrow for my review of Crash Into You! What are you waiting on this week?

Waiting on Wednesday: Dare You To (Pushing the Limits #2) by Katie McGarry

Waiting on Wednesday recognizes that we as bookies pine for books. This post is about what I am impatiently waiting for right now. It was started by Jill at Breaking the Spine.

I was very fortunate to receive a copy of Pushing the Limits from Around the World Arc Tours. It took me almost no time at all to tear through that book! With the grace of Simone Elkeles, Katie McGarry created a contemporary romance that I actually desired & found believable. Dare You To (Pushing the Limits #2) is the next novel in the series. Keep your eye out because May 28th can't get here soon enough! Check out the synopsis below. (And don't worry, this isn't a series that follows the same characters, so there are no spoilers!)

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....

From Goodreads

I love that the roles are reversed in this novel. Normally it's the popular girl who takes an interest in a moody, anti-social loner (because those are not the same thing) but this book creates a different kind of leading lady. I gotta say that I didn't know many skater girls in high school, but the few that I did were quite awesome. I'm hoping my awesome experiences will be reflected in this character (and this book) because Katie McGarry seems to have a knack for adding just the right amounts of heartbreak & happiness for it all the balance out. Did you read Pushing the Limits? Planning to read this one? What are you waiting on this week?

Pushing the Limits by Katie McGarry review

--"I won't tell anyone, Echo. I promise." Noah tucked a curl behind my ear. It had been so long since someone touched me like he did. Why did it have to be Noah Hutchins? His dark brown eyes shifted to my covered arms. "You didn't do that-did you? It was done to you?" No one ever asked that question. They stared. They whispered. They laughed. But they never asked.--

No one knows what happened the night Echo Emerson went from popular girl with jock boyfriend to gossiped-about outsider with "freaky" scars on her arms. Even Echo can't remember the whole truth of that horrible night. All she knows is that she wants everything to go back to normal.

But when Noah Hutchins, the smoking-hot, girl-using loner in the black leather jacket, explodes into her life with his tough attitude and surprising understanding, Echo's world shifts in ways she could never have imagined. They should have nothing in common. And with the secrets they both keep, being together is pretty much impossible.

Yet the crazy attraction between them refuses to go away. And Echo has to ask herself just how far they can push the limits and what she'll risk for the one guy who might teach her how to love again.

From Goodreads

Echo used to be as vibrant as her red hair is wild, until that fateful night. Now, almost two years later, she still can't remember what happened or why she is covered in hideous scars. What scares her more though is that she knows it involves her imbalanced mother & Echo is afraid she is becoming just like the woman she fears. Add on top of that her social outcast status & you've got a recipe for a miserable senior year of high school.

That is until the new social worker/counselor at school assigns her to tutor another student struggling with personal issues. Noah is the strong & silent type for the most part. After losing his parents, he also lost his little brothers to the same system that swallowed him up. With a string of nasty foster homes in his recent past Noah is determined to put his family back together by gaining custody of his brothers. In order to do that he needs to resemble a responsible adult, so excelling in school is on his to-do list.

The pair reluctantly circle one another & through several attempts and hits & misses they finally come together, but not at all how either of them pictured it.

This book absolutely stole my breath away. I found myself tearing through page after page in this story because I couldn't get enough of the characters. Katie McGarry has created such wonderful people & such a realistic world that I truly felt like I was living out the book myself. The humor was right on & the dialogue was very engaging. This was definitely a laugh out loud & cry alongside the characters kind of book.

While the basic plot isn't much new (you can't really create much new when you strip these things down to their bare bones) the layers of story that she creates around it are what make the book well worth reading. Echo & Noah are so dynamic & multifaceted that they continued to surprise me with their actions & motivations. You don't go into this story knowing everything. You have to earn your stripes for the appropriate knowledge right alongside each character. Even more entrancing was the situations in which we find the characters. Love & loss are two intertwined emotions in this book & both Echo & Noah do a fabulous job working their way through them.

Wit, humor & humility are such wonderful components of this story that I cannot convey through words. Even better though, these two main characters (along with their supporting cast) give a face to the difficult decisions that many people face. Some of these are mega decisions & some of them are more passive decisions, but all of them affect how the character is shaped.

Easily one of the best books of 2012, I strongly recommend you read Pushing the Limits. Simone Elkeles, Jennifer Echols & even Sarah Dessen fans can totally relate to this book & I hope you all enjoy it as much as  I did. I leave you with 2 quotes from the book.

"Noah had muscles, looks and trouble stalking him. Somehow, he made jeans and a T-shirt look dangerous."

"Luke used to give me butterflies. Noah spawned mutant Pterodactyls."

-Both quotes are from the ARC which was graciously provided by Around the World Tours