Synopsis: Beth is the bad girl that no one wanted, not even her parents. Ryan is the high school hero that everyone wants a piece of, even if no one knows the real him. If anyone knew the truth about Beth Risk's mum they'd send her mother to jail, so seventeen year-old Beth protects her at all costs. Ryan Stone is gorgeous, a popular jock and the town golden boy with secrets he can't tell anyone. Not even his friends. Their paths should never have crossed but now they're each other's only life line.
Dare You To is the heart-warming novel by Katie McGarry about two teens, Beth Risk and Ryan Stone, from two very different lives. Beth has spent her life floating from home to home, unwanted and unloved by those she thought she could trust and Ryan has struggled to live up to his parent's expectations and their demands to have him live his life the way they see fit. The two find themselves unexpectedly thrown together by Beth's uncle and soon discover that there's more to each other than they initially thought.
Much like her previous work, Pushing the Limits, this novel is beautiful, mysterious and heartbreaking to read. McGarry has such a compelling and delicate writing style that holds so much emotion and she has a way of making you feel so strongly about each of her characters that there is no in between about them; you either love them or you hate them.
You can't help but sympathise with and admire Beth. Despite everything she's been through with everyone she thought she could trust running out on her and having to deal with an alcoholic mother with an abusive boyfriend, she remains such a determined and strong character. At times you want to hit her for being so judgmental and always seeing the bad in people, but then you just want to comfort her for keeping it together and always fighting for what she believes in regardless of how many times she get hurts.
Ryan on the other hand is a little more difficult to sympathise with because despite a few things he's not sure about in regards to his future and where he stands with his relationship with his family, he more or less has everything together. Fortunately McGarry uses his character to break the boundaries and show what a terrible judge of character we can all be and how easy it is to wrongly stereotype someone because of past experiences or your general thoughts about them without actually knowing anything of the person or what they've faced.
The way in which Beth and Ryan's relationship builds is really tantalising to read despite being a little cliché. When they first meet they got off to a particularly defective start but after Beth's uncle reintroduces them to each other they begin to notice an attraction and connection with each other, both of which initially believe the opposite person doesn't feel, so they avert their feelings for a while. But even when they do begin to express their feelings there's always something that gets in their way, thus causing emotional confusion for both characters and a slightly frustrating relationship.
Despite being dual narrated by Beth and Ryan, a lot of the novel refers back to Beth's past and the strong narrative enigma that flows throughout the story; what happened to Beth's father and what is her mother hiding from everyone in her bedroom? McGarry does an admirable job of building up the tension of the story throughout the novel to the penultimate revealing of both questions and keeps you guessing about what could possibly be going on. Although not as terrifying and astonishing to discover as Echo's story in Pushing the Limits, Beth's life is really interesting to learn more about and highlights the fact that just because you don't have it as bad as another person does not mean you shouldn't be any less dejected by the matter.
Admirably, Dare You To is a novel about love, loss, trust and betrayal between two teenagers and their relationship which began with a dare and became an attraction they can't resist.
I give Katie McGarry and Dare You To ★★★★★
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