Book Reviews

Pushing the Limits by Katie McGarry

Genre: Young Adult, Contemporary, Romance
Pages: 392 (hardcover)
Publish date: July 31st 2012
Publisher: Harlequin Teen
ISBN: 0373210493
Purchase: Book Depository – Amazon UK – Amazon US – Amazon AU

Pushing the Limits:

Okay, so if you don’t follow me on twitter, you don’t see me spaz a lot of the time about Kaite McGarry, I adore her. Butyou know what? I have only read Pushing the Limits. The only reason I haven’t read the others in the Pushing the Limits series is simply because I own the US paperback edition so I have to wait quite a while for them to be published.

I loved Pushing the Limits there is no doubt about it. Firstly the storyline is very intriguing, it really pulled me in from the start. We as readers are going on the journey with Noah and Echo, as they reveal their past, and find out about it, so do we. Pushing the Limits is confronting and real, it is not some snappy romance.

I really enjoyed Echo, she is different to any other female character I have read before. She doesn’t remember what happen to her or how she got the scars. She is confused about what is really going on, Echo is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and doesn’t understand why people keep her shadowed, which is interesting to see her journey. I felt after finding what really happened, why people didn’t tell her? I also felt that she was too sheltered which made finding out a rough experience. I felt that Echo was a very ‘real’ character.

The worst type of crying wasn’t the kind everyone could see–the wailing on street corners, the tearing at clothes. No, the worst kind happened when your soul wept and no matter what you did, there was no way to comfort it. A section withered and became a scar on the part of your soul that survived. For people like me and Echo, our souls contained more scar tissue than life.

Some might say that Echo is a weak character but I think she is quite the opposite. She is strong enough for staying alive and for not losing herself in the process. She not only has to deal with the not so perfect home life but has to deal with all the kids at school, staring at her, spreading rumours about her and not having any friends anymore. Her feelings are just so raw and painful that they pierced my heart.

Noah, Noah, Noah. When you say bad boy, I think of Noah. Noah has had his own heartache but he hides it within this hard exterior. He’s a rough boy but deep down, you cannot find someone as caring as Noah. He shifts not only his world but Echo’s as well. They are so adorable together, they have become one of my OTP’s. You can understand why he is so distant, such the ‘bad boy.’

I love you enough to never make you choose.

Katie McGarry is so talented when it comes to writing characters that have their walls up and are really fractured on the inside. She knows how to write characters that help break down these walls. That is what she did exactly with Noah and Echo, they are both broken but with the help of each other they start to break down each other’s wall’s. She is also really talented at making the reader cry and the emotions that she makes you feel through both Echo and Noah.

Pushing the Limits is told in dual perspectives both from Echo and Noah and unlike most authors Katie McGarry does it perfectly. You can tell one character from another, their feelings don’t get mixed up and she is able to write from both a girl’s and boy’s perspective.

Overall Pushing the Limits takes you on a journey, and it makes you feel all emotions. You’ll want to laugh, and you’ll want to cry.

Have you read Pushing the Limits? What did you think of it?