OHMYGOD! Someone help, because Noah and Echo are just too dang adorable and I just can't even... The happy ending made me so, well, happy and melty on the inside. Everything just feel into place for everyone and it was awesome. Echo's stuff with her mom was pretty intense. But that just made the whole book so much better and more real, almost.

I need the other ones ASAP. (I already read Isiah's story, though, on accident... I didn't realize they were connected.)

I had never read anything by Katie before and I must say I am absolutely thrilled that I chose this book (series). The characters are rough around the edges but you can't help but love them and want more for them than they expect for themselves. Loved it!

To be honest, I didn't think this would be THAT good. I mean, it's a YA and I am not big into YA anymore. However, I wanted to give it a shot since it's been on my TBR for a long time.

I loved this books. I loved everything about it. I loved Echo and Noah. My heart ached for Echo and her relationships with her father, Ashley, her friends. My heart hurt for her because she felt like she couldn't be herself. I hated her friends for that. I hated that she felt like she would be judged. Then again, that's high school for you. Man, I am glad I am over that time in my life.

Noah, I love you. I cried during EVERY SINGLE scene between him and his brothers. I loved his personality. I loved his love for his brothers. I loved how he didn't care what people thought about him. I loved how much he tried to help Echo. I loved how he saw Echo and her scars didn't faze him.

The worst type of crying wasn't the kind everyone could see--the wailing on the 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 scars than life.

“Because growing up means making tough choices, and doing the right thing doesn't necessarily mean doing the thing that feels good.”

I also loved Mrs. Collins (and Noah's constant need to tell her how badly she drove).


“If you’re scared, tell me. If you need to cry and scream, then do it. And you sure as hell don’t walk away from us because you think it would be better for me. Here’s the reality, Echo: I want to be by your side. If you want to go to the mall stark naked so you can show the world your scars, then let me hold your hand. If you want to see your mom, then tell me that too. I may not always understand, but damn, baby, I’ll try.”

I was so excited to pick this book up! Three main reasons for that: 1. Lots of buzz from other bloggers including those who don't normally read much contemporary; 2. the fact that I do read a good amount of contemporary and have a special soft spot for it; and 3. I have read and loved a lot of HarlequinTeen books lately and I think they are just hitting it out of the ballpark with their lists of books. But I was also nervous because it seems like heavily hyped books tend to let me down...what would be the case for Pushing the Limits?

As it turns out, I am not one of the people who will gush over this book: not because it was bad or because I didn't like it. It has a lot of good points and I am comfortable giving it four stars. But it is very much not my kind of story. There is drama on top of drama on top of more drama with little humor to lighten the plot and lift my spirits.

I mean, so much drama! One of our narrators (did I mention this was dually narrated between the lead characters? That was a definite plus for me-I love multiple narrators!) is Echo, former popular girl who lost her status following the news of the death of her brother in Afghanistan and then a night she can't remember but that resulted in serious scars on her arms and a restraining order against her mother. The other narrator is bad boy Noah, orphan, druggie, and foster kid who is trying to fight the system to gain custody of his two younger brothers.

Now that is a lot to take in, right? But it's only a snippet of the drama these two go through. Every time I thought they might catch a break, something else had to break. It added layers and ratcheted up the intensity of their circumstances but it ended up feeling too much for me. I know some people love these melodramatic romantic contemporaries but I'm not one of those people. If you are that kind of person, then I definitely recommend this for you!

Another thing is that while I liked the two narrators, I didn't love them. My love is reserved for supporting characters Mrs. Collins, the slightly off-beat school psychiatrist who just might be an adult they can trust; Isaiah and Beth, Noah's two friends who have been as battered by the foster care system as him; and Lila, a true friend to Echo. In fact, one of my favorite parts of this reading experience ended up being the sneak peek at a companion novel following Beth due in 2013; I can't wait for that!

Overall: A strong contemporary if heavy on the drama and light on the comedy.

Cover: Love Echo's hair-very true to the story. Personally I don't think the cover is very dynamic but it suggests a contemporary love story.

This review was originally published at Fluttering Butterflies

I know I've already listed this book on my favourite books of the year so far list and I've gushed about it to most everybody since I finished it, but it really must be said again. Pushing the Limits by Katie McGarry is a beautiful book, an absolute favourite of mine and one that I cannot recommend enough!

This book is so very beautiful emotional and absolutely heartbreaking in its rawness and its honesty. Echo and Noah are such great characters, I found it very easy to fall into their head and into their stories. And in doing so, my heart ached alongside theirs and I became fully immersed into this book. I was bereft when it finished, completely wrung-out with emotion.

I do love a good love story, but stories like Echo's and Noah's grab me harder and longer than most because they are characters who are very broken in so many different ways. Echo used to be popular and outgoing with a great boyfriend. But all of that goes away after Echo is the victim of a violent crime that results in her arm covered in scars. But the worst thing is that Echo cannot recall anything about what happened, only that it occurred at the hands of somebody who loved her. I found Echo's journey throughout this book to be painful in so many ways. Her attempts at learning the details of the incident, her PTSD, her troubled mental state are all absolute agony to read at times. But it was also very real and tangible. Together with her physical scars and the loss of her memory, Echo is dealing with the emotional pain of losing her brother in the recent past. All that grief and confusion and pain make Echo a wreck of a character, but one is very sympathetic and somebody that I was rooting for right from the very beginning.

And that's just Echo! Pushing the Limits splits the narrative between both Echo's perspective and Noah's. And Noah is dealing with his own hardships. He's not your typical bad boy, Noah. Sure, he's hot and he smokes pot and has plenty of experience with the ladies, but he also just really wants his family back. After his parents died in a fire, Noah and his two younger brothers have all been put in care and Noah is determined to graduate high school and become their legal guardian. But it isn't as simple as that and he's holding onto some serious secrets.

They shouldn't work together, this damaged girl and this bad boy. But together, Echo and Noah heat up the pages of this book! The chemistry between them is unbelievable! Really, this book comes so highly recommended from me! It is an incredible book with its emotion and its intensity! Read it, you won't be sorry!

Ich habe ein bisschen gebraucht, um in die Geschichte hinein zu finden, aber dann hat mich die Story wirklich gefesselt. Sehr emotional.

4.5/5 stars really

Damn this book was intense. If I've learnt nothing else, it's that the American child protective services and foster system is dreadful. Noah and his situation just broke my heart, far more so than Echo's.

Great writing - couldn't put this book down! Even read it despite suffering severe motion sickness while on the bus because I just couldn't stop reading! The characters are extremely well crafted and the development of these characters and their complicated relationships is what elevated this book above some of the other contemporary YA books I've read.

This isn't really my genre of choice but I'm a sucker for bad boys with scars and tattoos so I had to read this book and I'm so glad I did. The only thing that prevented me from giving this book 5/5 is that the ending seemed a little too good to be true. I'm not a fan of unrealistically happy endings and this all just seemed to tie up a little too neatly considering how raw the rest of the story had been. Still, definitely worth reading!

Read during BooktubeAThon 2014.

This book was a wonderful read. I really loved the characters and the way they grew throughout the story.

Let me start off by saying that this book made me cry more than any other contemporary book I've read. Ok, so maybe it was partly due to my hormones acting all crazy. But let's just say it wasn't.

Echo and Noah are two teens that are on their search for normal. Echo just want to understand what happened to that night that caused her to have the scars on her arm. All Noah wants is his family back. I think that everyone is trying to find what is "normal" nowadays, especially teens. I just wanted to reach in and hug them or help guide them in the right direction.

Echo wants to bring memories to the surface to help her piece together the night of the accident. On top of it she has all these other factors in her life that makes "normal" seem far away.

Her "friends" (which I like to use loosely) want to her to be back with her ex, so they can be the power couple of the school. It isn't until they see Noah for he truly is do they back off. She never sees her mother because of the restraining order against her. Imagine not being able to talk to someone for answers, and not because they're dead, but you legally aren't allowed to. Adding to it, her brother was killed overseas while serving in Afghanistan. Something that Echo can't find peace over. It isn't until she starts a project that her brother started that she can finally have her peace. I know what it's like to not being able to say good-bye to someone. But that story is for another time. Then finally, to top it off, her father and stepmom are having a baby!

I give Echo major kudos for being able to just handle all this sh*t. I think if I had any of this stress, I would just throw my hands up in the air and give up.

Then there is Noah who lost his parents due to a fire. He also has 2 little, smart (Batman is where its at little man) and very adorable little brothers. All Noah wants is to have his brothers live with him. Not thinking about what it would do to his life or theirs. He just wants to be a family again, at all costs.

Katie did a bloody amazing job of the dual point of view, and I definately took some notes from it. Also, her ability to get into a guys head was perfect, she made Noah's thoughts sound natural but not cliched.

In the end, they both realize what they need and what is best for themselves and the ones around them. And they discover that in order to have "normal", all they need is each other.