Crash Into You by Katie McGarry
Author: Katie McGarry Website|Twitter
Published: 6 Deecember 2013 (MiraInk)
Format: Kindle e-book (ARC)
Pages: 352
Buy the paperback: Amazon|Hive|BookDepository
Buy the e-book: Kindle|Kobo
Source: Received free copy from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thanks MiraInk!
Plot Summary (from Goodreads):
The girl with straight A's, 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.
My Review:
I absolutely adored both Pushing the Limits and Dare You To, so I couldn't wait to get into McGarry's third instalment! Crash Into You tells Isaiah's story as he meets and falls for Rachel, a girl who loves cars just as much as he does.
I loved what I'd seen of Isaiah in previous books and I was excited to dive into his character a little more. The book is written in alternating points of view between him and Rachel, and loved getting inside his head for those chapters. McGarry definitely wins at writing characters. Rarely do I read books where I connect with them so much and where they feel so real to me. What I loved about Isaiah in this book was seeing the slightly softer side to him, not only when it comes to his feelings for Rachel, but in other aspects of his life as well. There's definitely a lot more than meets the surface!
As well as those characters I've already come to know and love, I also fell immediately for Rachel, Isaiah's love interest in the story. She has a really interesting back story that instantly made me feel for her. Her family is haunted by the death of Rachel's sister Colleen, who Rachel herself never met. She's constantly living in the shadow of her older sister and her parents treat her almost like a replacement, not acknowledging her as her own person. Rachel also has the presence of her older brothers and twin brother Ethan to deal with, and they're very protective of her. I could sympathise for her fight to be independent and loved seeing her find her voice throughout the story.
As always, the chemistry the author has conjured up was intense and there were some great passionate scenes between Rachel and Isaiah. Overall I really liked their relationship. The two come from completely different backgrounds so it was really interesting to see the contrast and how that affected things. I think I would have liked a little more build up and the two getting to know each other. Things move pretty quickly and I felt a lot of the early relationship was purely based on looks. I think having read Dare You To earlier this year I was hoping for more of the love/hate kind of thing that Beth and Ryan had going on. By the end of the book, however, I was completely smitten with Rachel and Isaiah.
Speaking of Beth, I was excited to see how the events of Dare You To would impact on Isaiah's story. With Beth taking more of a backseat role, I was happy to see the presence of Abby, another of Isaiah's friends. She really stole the show with her bubbly persona, and I really enjoyed the developing friendship between her and Rachel.
I could probably speak about the characters all day long, because there are so many incredibly strong relationships in this book. I loved the exploration of the relationship between Rachel and her brothers, especially her twin brother Ethan, as well as the tension between Rachel and her mother. I really enjoyed the scenes between Isaiah and his social worker Courtney too, and of course Isaiah and Noah's friendship was another highlight.
The book centres a lot on Rachel and Isaiah's love of cars, and there are plenty of scenes involving things like drag races. I felt these scenes and the exploration of the gritty underworld of illegal street racing really added a sense of danger to Crash Into You. I could really feel the fear of both characters as they get swept up in this dark world, and there were plenty of tense and exciting scenes.
With characters I cared so much about, this was bound to be an emotional read, and there were some really powerful scenes in Crash Into You that tore at my heart a little bit. I loved getting to know Isaiah and discovering Rachel, who had so much about her and has become one of my favourite characters from the series. Excitingly the next book will focus on Rachel's brother West, so I'm super excited to read that one! I think Dare You To has become my favourite book of the series, but Crash Into You was still an enjoyable and powerful read.
Rating: 4*
What to read next: Take Me On by Katie McGarry, the next book in the Pushing the Limits series, which will be published in 2014
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I really didn't enjoy Dare You To as much as the other two... I absolutely loved Crash Into You :) Love Isaiah so much!
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