The Dare follows Marley, who is finally completing her senior year in high school with a commitment to the prestigious school of UCLA. But senior year won’t come without setbacks, such as her long-time feud with her old best friend, Rhett, who suddenly abandoned her when they entered high school, leaving Marley to find her own group of friends and swear to never interact with Rhett. But that proves to be more difficult as Rhett and his infamous older brothers are known to issue dares for the seniors and, if they refuse to do them, all sorts of past mistakes arise, leading to dark consequences. While the easiest dares are executed, Marley and her friends turn out to be the most unfortunate when they are given the most dangerous dare: drive Danger Alley, a long stretch of winding road, without headlights during the darkest moment of night. Marley and her friends believe that they’ll be able to do well without complications, but when the unthinkable happens, Marley must do everything in order to make sure nothing escalates out of control. But, when Marley’s small group of friends begins to crumble, Marley is determined to not trust anyone- and to find out who is trying to frame her for a crime that she didn’t commit.
I have to say, this book was kind of underwhelming. I really thought that I was settled in for a long ride of suspense, but I just ended up with a boring novel. While almost all the characters played a humongous rule in the execution of the plot, they all fell flat and like cardboard cutouts. The ending also was incredibly rushed, and I felt like some of the reasoning for Marley’s decision didn’t make any sense or wasn’t fully explained. The actual crime itself fell short no matter how much Marley and her friends worried about it because it was literally only like four pages of the actual scene itself. The work of trying to cover it all up came up much more than needed and became sort of repetitive and boring. And I was really annoyed by Marley’s choices throughout the book. For example, she knows that she hasn’t done anything wrong at all and has nothing that Rhett could bring up, but she still does the dares that are for herself only, like camping in the woods alone for a whole night! That was just stupid, and even her friends let her know that she can literally decline it because she’s the so-called “innocent” one of the group. This book fell short to me and just was a bore to finish but it is an easy read, so there’s that.