Pushing the Limits Review

Pushing the Limits by Katie McGarry

"I won't tell anyone, Echo. I promise." Noah tucked a curl behind my ear. It had been so long since someone touched me like he did. Why did it have to be Noah Hutchins? His dark brown eyes shifted to my covered arms. "You didn't do that-did you? It was done to you?" No one ever asked that question. They stared. They whispered. They laughed. But they never asked.

So wrong for each other...and yet so right.

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.

My Review:

This book will jerk at your heartstrings and demand tears to fall. It's a powerful book about finding normal and a journey to self-discovery.

We're first introduced to Echo, a girl who has been horribly disfigured. She wears gloves to cover her scars and she tries to remember what happens the night of her "attack". She talks to Noah outside the counselor's office and things just go completely crazy from there.

Echo is a nice, quiet girl who used to be popular. Her situation just shows how horrible humans can be towards each other. Her friends don't want to hang out with her at first because she is so emotionally distant, yet they can't seem to recognize and understand that she needs her space and a new way of life. And her family had me wanting to scream at them! Her stepmom is an awful person who can't realize how messed up Echo is and her father won't stop butting into Echo's life - in all the wrong ways. Noah is, at first glance, just a jerk. But throughout the book his story had me crying waaaay more than Echo's.

The plot of the book is just this entire self-discovery journey where Noah and Echo build each other up and get comfortable in their own skins. Sometimes the journey has its rough patches but they only kept me on the edge of my seat, wondering what the heck was going to happen next. The single problem I had with this story was that the ending was too abrupt, I felt like I'd just gotten to know Echo and Noah and then they went and walked away from me.

If you're looking for a light, summer read don't bother with this book. Pushing the Limits is about figuring out what's underneath and finding someone who can see that.

4/5 stars

*Note: I received a copy of this book to review from Netgalley. This in no way altered my opinion/review.