Khaden, Sas and Ruby have been best friends forever.  Always mucking around, daring each other to do crazy things.  But how many more dares can their friendship handle before it tears apart and destroys the world as they know it?

Dare You focuses on three teenagers, Khaden, Sas and Ruby, who are the best of friends.  They dare each other all the time to do crazy things, like shoplift or run across a freeway.  However, the dares and the attitudes of the children themselves are tearing the friendship apart.  Ruby can see that Sas and Khaden treat each other differently now, and she is being shafted aside.

Tensions are growing between the two girls who can’t seem to last a minute without bickering, and family problems only add to the drama.

This was a unique book which left me guessing until the last page.  It was intense and exciting and I really liked the character development.  The way the cook was set out was quite interesting and helped me understand the characters better; the chapters were divided into Khaden, Sas and Ruby’s points of view.  This really aided the book and plot a lot, as well as the character development.

By the end, I had grown to like all three of the main characters, which is usually a good indicator as to how well the characters have been created.  Usually.  Although, I would’ve liked a bit more detail on the secondary characters, but since the book was from the point of view of the three kids this didn’t matter too much as they were focused on each other.  Basically, the first chapter – a few pages – was told in first person from Ruby’s point of view, the next in first person in a journal-style from Sas’s point of view and the next in third person from Khaden’s point of view.  The sequence followed, with the order changing but the way the bookw as told not changing.

This book was set in Melbourne, and I suppose you could say I felt kind of weird reading this book being familiar with almost all the places mentioned.  The language used was effective and the plot was unique.

All in all, Dare You was a satisfying read.  Whilst it wasn’t anything overly special and probably something I wouldn’t go on recommending to countless people, it was unique and different, and I think you should read it.  Go on, I dare you.

Rating: 3/5