Pushing the limits

Not my cup of tea. It was a rather...stale read. I couldn't connect with either of the main characters. Echo was a doormat for almost the entire book, Noah was just dull, I was tempted to skip his POV completely.

What irked me the most was that they were supposed to be these extraordinarily bright kids with a ton of potential (we're told that Echo was a great artist and had great academic results and that Noah was also very intelligent despite doing not so good in school), yet there's nothing to back that up. You can't see it in their interests, nor in their choice of friends, nor in the conversations they have with each other. Their vocabularies are much too rudimentary for kids with above average intelligence and a fairly decent education. But this probably stems from the author's own limitations. I wouldn't have brought this up if she hadn't insisted on portraying them as exceptional when they had mediocrity spelled all over them, academically and emotionally speaking.

Echo's amnesia was so far fetched. And when her father argued with her social worker that she shouldn't push her to remember because the last time she tried to do it she almost “broke her mind.” I LOLed so hard on this one. So that's what doctors use as a technical term these days, “to break one's mind”?

She also had craptastic friends and don't even get me started on her choice of boyfriends. How could a girl that “smart” fall for a guy like Luke? All he ever said to her was something “Oh, babe, you look so hot. You know I love you, babe. Let's have sex. Hahahahah. (Picturing Beavis)” What could he possibly have to offer other than being nice to stare at, because apparently he was “so hot”? Then we take Luke, we add a tragic past, some scars, a bad boy attitude, we tone down the douchebagerry and voila, we have Noah, lover boy number two. Very classy.

Their love was so nauseating. He kept calling her baby this, baby that, “you look so appetizing” etc. Yuck! I couldn't even feel any chemistry between them, let alone love.

The only thing I liked in the entire book was that Noah decided to go against his selfish feelings and not take his brothers away their foster parents, which was actually in their best interest.

Some “lovely” quotes:

I gazed into her beautiful green eyes and her fear melted. A shy smile tugged at her lips and at my heart. Fuck me and the rest of the world, I was in love.I'd fill her up and make her realize she'd always be empty without me.Say the word, baby, and I'll rock your world.Look at me, baby. I know you love me. Three nights ago you were willing to offer everything to me.No apologies. I could kiss you right now.Judging by the look in his chocolate-brown eyes, he meant it.Don't. I think I'm gonna puke. I loved the way his lips turned up–part mischievous smile, part man of mystery....I added a fucked up thought to another fucked up thought and I created a pile of shit.Baby, you've got enough strength and tenacity to takedown drug dealers. You'll be fine.I waited for my pulse to stop beating my veins like a gang initiation, for the blood to leave my face and for my lungs to not burn as I gasped.My siren had sung to me for way too long, capturing my heart, tempting me with her body, driving me slowly insane. Now, I expected her to pay up.

Waves of nausea

I wasn't too interested in Pushing the Limits, one I don't read much contemporary fiction and two the cover kind of screams romance but I got the ARC at BEA and so much people who had read advanced copies were giving Pushing the Limits positives reviews, including one of my favourite authors so I decided to give it a shot. This novel is so much more than a romance.

Told from alternating points of view Pushing the Limits is about Echo, who ever since an attack she can't remember that left her arm permanently scarred is trying not only to remember what happened to her so she can move on but is also trying to deal with the grief of losing her brother Aires who died overseas on deployment. It's about Noah, who after a fire kills his parents has been shipped from one foster home to another and only wants to be reunited with his little brothers again. It's about two people's struggles with overwhelming issues trying to find hope and happiness.

Pushing the Limits was both a deep and compelling read that had me glues to the pages and desperate to find out how the story ends. Katie McGarry knows how to create realistic characters and she knows how to get me to care about them. Both Noah and Echo are the reasons I did not want to put this book down, not only did I want to find out how their individual stories pan out but I wanted to see their relationship out and to find out what would become of it. Echo is a girl who was betrayed be someone she should have been able to trust above everyone else and because of the aftermath she hides herself from the world and has become a shadow of her former self. Noah is the result of the failings of the Foster Care system, there is barely anyone he will trust and he is both hurt and angry. It took me a while to like Noah; I could sympathize with him sure but because of his reputation for doing drugs and sleeping around with girls it wasn't until about one hundred pages in that I started liking him as a character but I eventually did and in the end he was the character that had me crying and wanting to comfort.

Pushing the Limits is not a fluffy light read but nor will it bog you down and fill you with angst. Pushing the Limits is both real and hopeful and a stand out début.