Maybe it’s because the main character is so much like you. Or the guy in the book causes your toes to curl and your imagination to go wild. (You know, as you try to figure out while reading how you can convince your husband to spring a leg hitch on you.) Possibly, it’s because the book transports your terrible–or just mundane–reality into a much needed escape. And sometimes, the story within the pages just resonates with your real life.
Other than the first one on that list, YA author Katie McGarry has done all of those things for me this year. I read her debut (Pushing the Limits) last January, and closed the book thinking “I wish I could transport myself back in time and give this book to my 16-year-old self. It was exactly what I needed and no one had written yet.”
Echo, the main character in Pushing the Limits, has scars on her arms and her back. All she knows about them is that her mother gave them to her, but she has no memory of the night she got them. Enter a new school therapist, who has all the answers Echo needs in her files, and Noah Hutchins, a foster kid with a foul mouth…who has his own reasons why he needs to get a peek at their therapist’s records.
On a personal level, what resonated with me is that the right guy doesn’t give a f*** about your scars, which is why I wish my teenage self could have read this book. (My scars were the result of a surgery and nothing like Echo’s, but I was vain and worried about them a lot.) And a few chapters into Crash Into You (the third in the series), I looked at my husband and said “You’re totally Isaiah! I mean, you don’t have tattoos, earrings, or a seriously screwed-up childhood, but personality-wise, I feel like I’m reading a book about you.”
But off of why I loved these books and onto why you will:
First off, the romances in these books are both scorching hot and yet somehow more authentic than most. The characters have problems–external plot ones and serious intrinsic flaws–but they work together. And while I’m not in the camp of wanting sex in my YA, oh my word, if authors are going to do it, more of them should learn how from Katie McGarry. There’s just enough detail without taking it too far, and there’s a lot of realism about the fact that a girl’s first time isn’t going to be something off a movie set (even if it’s emotionally fantastic).
Secondly, each book is about new main characters, but at least one of the new main characters was a minor character in the previous book. So you get a new romance–complete with awesome kissing scenes…and usually more–as well as a new plot, but you get to revisit old friends in each book.
Thirdly, each book is told from a dual point of view. I often hate this, because it isn’t every author who can nail this style of narration, but McGarry does it. And her male characters feel like guys–well, except for a few of their cheesier terms of endearment, but everything else is so fantastic about these books that I could overlook that.
And lastly, the characters in these book not only have their hot romances and problems to overcome, but they all have their own interests as well. I’m not at all into cars, but Isaiah and Rachel (the mc’s of book three) made me want to learn to drive stick and find a legal drag way to race at.
So, have I convinced you to read these yet? Because you really should.
P.S. Book #4 comes out in May and I’m already itching to read it.
