Isaiah has secrets, too. About where he lives, and how he really feels about Rachel. The last thing he needs is to get tangled up with a rich girl who wants to slum it on the south side for kicks-no matter how angelic she might look.
But when their shared love of street racing puts both their lives in jeopardy, they have six weeks to come up with a way out. Six weeks to discover just how far they'll go to save each other.
I’m not sure what kind of magic Katie McGarry weaves into her books, but it’s certainly powerful. Her stories are magnetic and her characters are so well written they feel like people you’ve known your entire life. I finished this book a few days ago, but as I was getting ready for bed last night I thought – I should read more of Crash Into You before I fall asleep…and then I remembered that I’d finished it. But she just writes the kind of stories that don’t feel like the characters stop existing when the words stop coming, so it’s easy to think you can just slip back into their narrative.
Every time I read a new book from Katie, I meet characters I could never imagine I’d love so much. Noah and Echo just stole me away, but then Ryan came along and he was everything you could want in a fictional boy. So I went in prepared to love Isaiah and Rachel, but they were so much more than I could have hoped. Isaiah surprised me completely and won me over quickly. Rachel was actually my favorite of the three girls, with her strength and determination. She was unique and ballsy, despite her situation and I completely admired her. Then you put Isaiah and Rachel together and they’re just intense, powerful and amazing.
One of Katie McGarry’s strengths as a YA writer is her ability to write teenagers that don’t exist in a bubble. Isaiah has his social worker who is trying to get him to talk to his mother and Rachel has her crazy family to deal with. Despite the street politics and the threats over their heads, everything just feels so authentic because of the exceptional way secondary characters are written. Even better, she builds secondary relationships, and I don’t know how she does it without it being overwhelming. Both Rachel and Isaiah have strong relationships with people outside of each other and the dynamics shine through so well.
Katie has definitely turned into a drop-everything-and-read writer for me. Every time, I think her books can't be better than the one before, but she always out-does herself. I dare say that Crash into You is my favorite book from her so far. The story was amazing and kept me turning the pages. I was on edge, I was nervous, and scared for these characters because they just went directly to my heart.
