Review: Pushing The Limits by Katie McGarry

 

I am in the minority on this book. Coz I didn't love it. I did like it. Kind of. It was a quick read and entertaining enough, but so many things annoyed me about it. I was actually quite perplexed as to what people see it in that I didn’t, especially at the beginning. There’s been a lot of comparisons to Perfect Chemistry and I can definitely see the connection: the dual narrators, the good girl and the bad boy who are paired together for school and find themselves falling hard for each other, the melodrama and the cheesiness. I was worried it would be too similar, but in the end there were enough differences to separate the two stories, and it was actually something else that annoyed me entirely. Noah.

Noah is a foster kid, separated from his little brothers since their parents died a few years ago. He's been in bad situations and has a serious chip on his shoulder. The only thing he cares about is getting his family back together. Until he meets Echo. Cue sparks and professions of undying love. While it's not quite insta-love, it's pretty damn close. Noah's internal monologue, especially when he's thinking about Echo, didn't feel authentic to me. It was like a fantasy of a guy, as opposed to a real teen boy.  I also didn't really buy the bad boy act - for most of Noah's life, he had a stable family and a promising future. I know what he's been through would screw someone up, but I don't think it would change your personality that dramatically. I could be wrong, but it bugged me anyway. But what really bugged me was his possessiveness. Note to YA/NA authors: this is not romantic. At all.

As for Echo, I didn't like or dislike her. Except for her name. That's just really stupid. Other than that, "meh" about sums up my feelings about her. Like Noah, she's been through a lot, and she has the emotional and physical scars to prove it. I was interested in discovering what had happened to her to make her this way, but I have to say I was a little dissatisfied with the resolution of that plot point. The way mental illness was dealt with made me a little uncomfortable at times.

Something that made me really uncomfortable was the fact that the only explicitly black character in the book dropped her Gs. This was something I noticed with the portrayal of non-white characters in the Perfect Chemistry series too. A lot of people probably drop their Gs in real life, but why is it only non-white characters that seem to do it on the page? It annoyed me so much in Pushing the Limits I almost stopped reading at the 10 per cent mark.

I'm glad I kept reading, because it did get a bit better. It was predictable, but it still kept me turning the pages. Despite my problems with it, it was highly readable. Though I still don't quite get the hype around it.

Rating: 3/5

Head Cast

Steven R. McQueen as Noah



Holland Roden as Echo

Fine Print
Published: 2012, Mira Ink
Source: Netgalley
Get It: Book Depository