Author: Katie McGarry
ISBN: 9781743564967
RRP: $16.99
Crash Into You is my out of sequence read from the Pushing The Limits series by Katie McGarry. I had read the first two and loved them, then read the fourth which I also loved so I couldn’t continue with the gap in my knowledge, I had to get my hands on Crash Into You.
Isaiah finally gets his story and we see a lot more of the boy behind the tattoos. We see him get over Beth, though I think that’s debatable as he still doesn’t want to see or hear about her. He has moved out of his foster home and is living in a rundown apartment with Noah. A severe and disturbing cash flow issue, or lack thereof, sees Isaiah do something he normally wouldn’t. He heads out take part in an illegal street racing meet to make some money, determined that it will be a one night only event for him to minimise the risk of getting caught. It is there he meets Rachel Young, who has been lured there unwittingly through her love of cars.
The meet does not go to plan and the two find themselves racing the clock together, hoping to outrun what’s sure to mean trouble.
Once again McGarry delivers. I loved this book like I have loved the others in the series but my experience with this one was completely different. The Pushing The Limits series are all interconnected and relatively sequential but they can be read stand alone, you just miss the background. I read Crash Into You after having read the next book in the series Take Me On so I knew what was going to happen. I knew the basic outline of what happened to get us to that point from a different character’s POV but hadn’t heard it from Rachel or Isaiah. Knowing the outcome could so easily have affected my enjoyment of this book but it didn’t, I was totally invested in discovering all the ins and outs of how it all came to pass that it didn’t matter, and it turns out that Take Me On takes place within the time frame of Crash Into You but different characters and POVs.
Generally the way it goes in this series is that you meet the leads and to a much lesser extent you become acquainted with their closest friends/family, you learn just enough to intrigue you and make you want to know them better. You are left with questions of their character but I didn’t have that this time around because I already knew him from the next book which made me a lot more sympathetic than I probably otherwise would have been.
Isaiah has had it rough, we know from previous books about his childhood in foster care and his unrequited love of his best friend Beth. Crash Into You allows us to get to know him much better, we discover the significance of the tattoos and much more about how he came to be in foster care. It also seems he may have found the girl of his dreams, a gorgeous, petite blonde who shares his love of fast cars. The two are from very different sides of the tracks, of course, and it seems destined for trouble – especially with her quartet of very protective brothers.
Rachel seems to have it all in her uber-showy mansion and her Mustang GT but appearances can be deceiving and that’s something Rachel has been banking on for as long as she can remember. The Young family look picture perfect from the outside but there is a lot going on behind mansion doors and every member of the family is fooling themself about what’s really going on.
McGarry has written another cast of beautifully flawed characters with no-one beyond redemption. An age old tale of lovers from different worlds finding a common ground and fighting the odds to be together. The characters face the same problems of everyday teens and McGarry deals with these issues sensitively and realistically.
I know whose story follows on from Rachel and Isaiah but I would love to know who else is going to get their own story, there are still a few contenders floating on the periphery that would make for great reading. Thank you Katie McGarry for another gripping read, I look forward to more.
I devour books, vampires and supernatural creatures are my genre of choice but over the past couple of years, I have broadened my horizons considerably. In a nutshell – I love to write! I love interacting with a diverse range of artists to bring you interviews. Perhaps we were perfect before – I LOVE WORDS!