Jaime’s Thoughts
Crash into You by Katie McGarry
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
3.5 stars
I have to be honest … I struggled with this one. Even after the lovely Meg put Isaiah on her all-time favorite swoony boy list I couldn’t seem to connect with him like I did with Noah and Ryan. And I don’t know what it was exactly.
In Crash Into You, the third in the Pushing the Limits series, we finally get Isaiah’s story. After Beth breaks his heart, Isaiah isn’t looking for anything serious with anyone. He’s more concerned with getting through school and making a life for himself, not just barely scraping by. Besides he has nothing to offer anyone, right?
Enter Rachel. Rachel has health issues? Vomiting induced by stress and panic attacks… The only reason she was born was to replace her sister who died of leukemia, and her family doesn’t seem to see what their demands are doing to her.
I would like to write an open letter to every single member of Rachel’s family, because yes, there isn’t a single one of them that I like. It would start something like this:
Open your damn eyes you fools. I hated how they all treated her and basically told her how to behave, what to do, what to say and then played it off as simply being protective. They weren’t. They were being assholes. And it killed me each and every time that she just went along with whatever they planned because ‘they love me and so I have to do what they want in order to keep that love.’ UGH. What I did love about Rachel is that she isn’t your typical girl… she loves cars and she’s unapologetic about it. She invests her time and money into maintaining hers and yay to McGarry for giving us another less traditional book girl to read about.
Sooooooo
As I said, Rachel’s one outlet is her car… it’s a mustang, and I know nothing about cars other than how to put gas in them, but her’s is pretty special I guess. Rachel decides she wants to drag race and shows up at an Illegal street race and this, my friends, is where she meets Isaiah .
A bit of bad luck brings the police around to break up the race, but leaves baddie Eric without his winnings and when he decides that it’s Rachel who is in debt to him, Isaiah steps up and says that her debt is his debt, which means his only way to raise the funds is doing something that he’s avoided … more street racing. But those aren’t the only areas of drama we have here… Isaiah is suddenly reunited with his mom who he hasn’t spoken to in years and this adds a layer of emotional drama for him.
What’s different about Pushing the Limits that I didn’t click with? Maybe the insta-love? It could be, because it’s definitely here, and I think I struggled with that a lot mostly because of Isaiah ’s history with Beth. I wasn’t really buying it. Also, I never really clicked with Rachel. Which sucks, because I liked both Beth and Echo from the first books. I will say that Rachel definitely has some major growth in this book, evolving from the quiet, mousy girl in the beginning to someone who knows what she wants and isn’t afraid to go for it.
I’m concerned about the next book in this series because it’s Rachel’s brother West’s story. As you may have noted from above, I didn’t like any of the people in that family, so we’ll see if McGarry can change my mind with his book.
Overall, this was a good read, maybe just not my favorite of McGarry’s so far. If you’re a fan of her other books I think you’re going to enjoy this one… maybe like me it won’t be as much, but the writing is still wonderfully done and I am looking forward to more from McGarry in the future.
Thank you to Harlequin & Netgalley for the advance review for my honest thoughts
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