Crash by Lisa McMann

Visions #1. Simon Pulse (January 2013) Library

If what you see is what you get, Jules is in serious trouble. The suspenseful first of three books from the New York Times bestselling author of the Wake trilogy.

Jules lives with her family above their restaurant, which means she smells like pizza most of the time and drives their double-meatball-shaped food truck to school. It’s not a recipe for popularity, but she can handle that.

What she can’t handle is the recurring vision that haunts her. Over and over, Jules sees a careening truck hit a building and explode...and nine body bags in the snow.

The vision is everywhere—on billboards, television screens, windows—and she’s the only one who sees it. And the more she sees it, the more she sees. The vision is giving her clues, and soon Jules knows what she has to do. Because now she can see the face in one of the body bags, and it’s someone she knows. Someone she has been in love with for as long as she can remember.

In this riveting start to a gripping trilogy from New York Times bestselling author Lisa McMann, Jules has to act—and act fast—to keep her vision from becoming reality.

I was expecting a more Before I Fall type of book with Crash but I could tell right away by the narrator's personality that it wasn't going to be that way. It was going to be more teenage pining but in a totally adorable way (finally pining for a cute guy done right) and just a more fun book than I was expecting even though one of the main things is the whole "I can see visions of you dying thing." It has a lot to do with the dynamics of the Demarco family. I mean it's about two (presumably Italian) restaurant rivalries so it's going to be interesting to say the least. The conversations between the three Demarco siblings made this book worthwhile. Without Jules' brother, Trey, I don't think I would have liked this book as much as I did. Although, on her own Jules was a pretty fun character to follow along.

Jules has no friends beyond her carefree brother and her wound up sister Rowan. She goes to school and back to work while pining for her forever crush Sawyer. She and Sawyer go way back. They became friends fairly early in their lives and knew their families didn't like each other around that time as well. Even so they kept their friendship secret until about seventh grade when it all blew up in their faces and Sawyer ignored her like the plague. Sawyer's a pretty nice guy otherwise - he has a reasonable explanation why he totally ignored her which you find out much later. Then Jules starts seeing this crash and starts narrowing down what exactly is going to happen in the crash one of which is the fact that Sawyer will be one of the body bags if she doesn't find a way to make the vision not come true. The vision part was alright but again what drives the story are the characters and the family dynamic. A couple of serious issues come up I hadn't been expecting so that's an advantage the story has too. Other than that there wasn't anything that surprised or wowed me. It's still a pretty good read and a really fast one if you need it. 

There was another problem I felt this book had. Towards the beginning I liked everything: the characters, the potential romance, and the visions but towards the end the romance became blah to me. It went from like zero to sixty with those two. It was slightly embarrassing the way Jules declared her love for Sawyer and his reaction afterwards. It just didn't bode well for me. Crash, although lacking in the wow factor is still a nice enough book to check out if you ever want to. I don't know if I want to continue on with the series. I've read that the second one is better but I'll see if I'm ever up to it.