Review: Pushing The Limits

Pushing the Limits
by Katie McGarry
Source: ARC from BEA
Release Date: July 31st 2012

Summary: No one knows what happened the night Echo Emerson went from popular girl with jock boyfriend to gossiped-about outsider with "freaky" scars on her arms. Even Echo can't remember the whole truth of that horrible night. All she knows is that she wants everything to go back to normal.But when Noah Hutchins, the smoking-hot, girl-using loner in the black leather jacket, explodes into her life with his tough attitude and surprising understanding, Echo's world shifts in ways she could never have imagined. They should have nothing in common. And with the secrets they both keep, being together is pretty much impossible.

Yet the crazy attraction between them refuses to go away. And Echo has to ask herself just how far they can push the limits and what she'll risk for the one guy who might teach her how to love again.

Review: You know a book is amazing when you stay up all night to read it. The night that I read Pushing the Limits, I got 3 hours of sleep and I had to go to work the next day, not a great combination but it was wroth it. I picked it up thinking I would just read a couple chapters to help me fall asleep. I was completely wrong.  Katie McGarry just grabs you, with plot, characters, and so much drama. I started around 9 and the next time I looked up it was already 1 am. At that point I was almost done with the book. Pushing the Limits is a novel you can just get lost in.

Everything about this book was perfect. I couldn't even think of one thing I didn't like. I can tell you what my favorite part was. The characters. Katie McGarry created these emotionally packed, beaten up characters who were just completely their own. They had problems, their lives were no where near perfect, which made this novel so good. Who wants to read about a perfect person who nothing bad every happens too? I especially liked Echo who had this mystery surrounding her. I kept trying to figure what happened to Echo as she was herself. 

Noah was another emotionally packed character that I thoroughly enjoyed in Pushing the Limits. When I read his POV, it felt true to what a teenage boy would be thinking. So many times when a female author writes in a male perspective, especially a teenage one, I just don't believe it. Usually they seem kind of girly. I'm not sure how Katie McGarry did it just she really got inside a teenage guys head, and made his perspective so believable. 

The plot was another thing that I loved about Pushing the Limits. There was so much going on for so many different characters, which is some novels just doesn't work but here it did. Echo and Noah go through quite a few changes before the end of the novel. Which is probably why it was so long, the ARC was 403 pages (which is long for a contemporary novel. I'm not complaining though, I love long novels). In the beginning they hate each other, then they become friends, then there's romance and so much more after that. Nothing was left out, and everything felt believable. It didn't move to fast or too slow. The pace was perfect and by the end I had closure with the novel. 

I don't know how Katie McGarry did it, but in the end I felt like I knew everything about these characters. I had laughed with them, cried with them (and I'm talking about crying real tears, maybe reading at 1 in the morning makes me more emotional). I fell in love with this book. I haven't read such a great contemporary novel in a long time. EVERYONE should read Pushing the Limits. 

P.S. I think I should put a warning label with this one for the younger readers on this blog. Pushing the Limits is no where near being clean. There's some drug use, language, mature situations, abuse, and well a lot. This is a packed book. 

--Danielle