!!!!

I really enjoyed it, in the cliche way the all females love a good girl falling for a bad boy book, but I didn't love it enough to rave about it to my friends- or actually tell my friends that I read it...

This book is super easy to read and definitely something that I recommend to anyone that wants a Contemporary YA romance. What you see is what you get, and if you like what you see, go ahead and get it.

I reiterate what I've been saying recently about New Adult genre - they are so good for escapism if you're in a reading lull but don't read too many in a row!!

I flew through the pages of this book in only a few hours while babysitting... Now I want to read Beth's story so so bad!

Anyone who’s even remotely interested in young adult books has surely heard of Katie McGarry by now. I’m not the biggest contemporary fan, but I have been wanting to read a Katie McGarry book for quite a while now. I finally got my hands on one!

I have to say, I really, really liked it, but I didn’t love it. There were so many things that were great about this book: the family issues, friend/school issues, and the insight into the foster care system. However, the one big thing that kept this book from being a five star book for me was the romance. I’m sad to say that the romance in this book fell super flat for me.

I really loved reading from both Echo’s and Noah’s POV. Katie McGarry pulled this off very well and I was able to immerse myself in both of their lives. Echo and Noah both have a heartbreaking past and serious issues that they are dealing with. This is how they end up meeting at the school therapist’s office. By the way, Mrs. Collins was probably my absolutely favorite part of this novel. I loved her insights and the clever way she dealt with these two.

The secondary cast of characters was very well done (as you can tell, by my love of Mrs. Collins). I really felt the struggle for Echo when her popular friends didn’t stand by her. Noah’s friends, Isaiah and Beth were at the same time entertaining and frustrating (well, mostly Beth). The family drama with Echo’s dad and stepmother was extremely relatable to me.

So why did the romance not do it for me? Part of it is because Noah is supposed to be a tough, bad-ass, one-night-stand type of guy, but the instant he sees Echo, he kind of melts into a pile of pudding. And not in a good way. He starts smelling her all the time and calling her mushy nicknames, such as his “siren”. This was so unrealistic to me that every time Noah became Mr. Cupid, I wanted to set my book down. A book should draw me in, not push me out.

On top of that, I just honestly didn’t feel any chemistry between Echo and Noah. I understood why they were drawn to each other, but I didn’t feel it. It was empty and felt forced.

So yes, I really enjoyed this book. But I wasn’t sucked in and it wasn’t the amazing I wanted it to be. However, I think this is a case of “it’s not the book, it’s me”, because many people love this book and I really do understand why. Contemporary fans will love it. I am really excited to read more Katie McGarry, though!

For this review and more, check out Book Love, my blog!

Meh.

I think I've found my Colleen Hoover-type author for the year. I really liked this. If this series ends up getting as good as Nowhere But Here is, then this will be a good mourning period/palate cleanser series to have around.

Another broken person can see the damned, and they both will heal. I love Echo and Noah's story. It's not cliche. And it's not too whorish. It deals with reality at best. I think people can easily relate to this story and the issues laced on it. I love the mythology and the art parts. And the thrills are to-die-for!

Diese Rezension erschien ursprünglich auf kopf.kino!



// Was passiert //
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.

© Mira Ink & Katie McGarry



// Was ich denke //
Ich sage es gleich mal zu Beginn: ich hätte nicht gedacht, dass mir Pushing the Limits so gut gefällt. Ich habe eine typische Jugendschnulze erwartet, aber tatsächlich kam mir das Buch überhaupt nicht so vor. Natürlich ist es auch keine absolut innovative Geschichte, was mir aber überraschenderweise nichts ausgemacht hat. Aber was fand ich nun genau so gut? Das möchte ich euch verraten…
Zuerst einmal gefällt mir der Schreibstil von Katie McGarry total. Er ist der Zielgruppe entsprechend locker und lässt sich sehr gut und flüssig lesen. Ich bin dadurch unheimlich gut in die Geschichte reingekommen, konnte mich sehr schnell in die Charaktere hinein versetzen. Ich habe oftmals beim Lesen das Gefühl, das Geschehen von außen zu betrachten, bei Pushing the Limits war es aber eher, als wäre ich mittendrin. Dafür also schon mal einen dicken Pluspunkt.

Das ist sicherlich auch ein Grund, warum ich von Anfang an einen guten Zugang zu den Charakteren gefunden habe. Noah und Echo sind ziemlich kaputte Menschen mit heftigen Hintergrundgeschichten, aber sie waren mir direkt sympathisch. Ich konnte sowohl ihre Handlung als auch Ängste und Sehnsüchte vollkommen verstehen: Echos Wunsch nach Normalität, Noahs Kampf um seine Brüder… es wirkte alles passend. Auch der Verlauf der Geschichte stimmte für mich: Echos Suche nach der Wahrheit, Noahs Angst, seine Brüder zu verlieren und seine Obsession mit der Pflegefamilie, wie die beiden sich gegenseitig unterstützen. Ich will gar nicht mehr dazu sagen, um niemanden zu spoilern. Jedenfalls passte es zusammen und ich hatte an keiner Stelle das Gefühl, dass die Autorin über das Ziel hinaus geschossen ist.

Aufgrund des nicht gerade fröhlichen Lebens der Protagonisten, kommt das ganze Buch mit einer sehr düsteren, traurigen Stimmung daher. Selbst als die beiden irgendwie zu einander finden, bestimmen ihre Probleme das Geschehen und auch wenn sie zwischendurch miteinander lachen, so ist es eben doch keine typische Liebesgeschichte mit Regenbögen und Schmetterlingen.
So völlig untypisch fand ich auch die “Rollenverteilung” während der Annäherung. In den meisten Romanen ist es ja nun mal doch das Mädchen, das die Geigen im Himmel hört und über die sonnengeflutete Wiese springt, während sie von Häschen und Vöglein begleitet wird. Well… not here. Natürlich merkt man, dass Echo sich so langsam in den harten Bad Boy verliebt und natürlich erwähnt sie auch, wie gut er sich anfühlt, aber Noah ist derjenige, der so richtig rumkitscht, Echo seine Nymphe und Sirene nennt. Teilweise erinnerte mich seine Ausdrucksweise ein bisschen an den Herren Romeo, von wegen “sprich nochmal, oh holde Maid, erhelle mein Herz mit deiner Stimme.” Okay, ja, vielleicht empfinde ich das etwas extremer als andere, aber so kam es eben bei mir an. Und lustigerweise hat es mich kaum gestört! :D

Wer mich und meinen Geschmack kennt, weiß, dass ich mit Liebesgeschichten eigentlich kaum bis gar nichts anfangen kann, doch Pushing the Limits hat mir wirklich von vorne bis hinten gefallen. Ob es nun daran liegt, dass die Grundstimmung des Buches so dunkel ist und sich das Geschnulze zumeist in Grenzen hält, kann ich nicht sagen, aber ich konnte das Buch kaum aus der Hand legen. Ich habe mit Noah und Echo gelitten, gelacht, gehofft und geweint – und das ganz ohne die Augen verdrehen zu müssen. Gut, es ist ein wenig vorhersehbar, was zwischen ihnen passiert, aber da das ganze Drumherum so einnehmend war, hat mich das in keinster Weise gestört.

"her shoulders never shook. No tears streamed down her face. 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."

”Tell me you chose me, Echo.”…
“I chose you.”…
“You will never regret it. I promise.”

Ok, I’ve been obsessed with this book as soon as I got my eyes on it so I read it in less than 8 hours. What I most like about this book is that it isn’t a romantic teen met prince kind of thing. Both characters are so strong and broken people and the book is not just about love. It’s about two people that are hurt and that find themselves and realizes that it’s okay to depend on each other. It’s okay to trust someone and get help, cause they need to. It’s about discovering who they are, who they want to be.
The book has three major subjects: Echo’s story, Noah’s story, and their story together and all this is mixed. Sometimes I felt that Noah’s parts were too small. We know more about Echo, but we see more about their love for Noah. Noah is the more romantic of the two of them I really loved his parts and Echo… Echo is too broken and too preoccupied with her problems and too dependent of what her friends and people thought. Noah is way more independent. But that goes so well with their personality that I didn’t care about those things.

Spoiler

Cause when you read the book, you start to understand them. Echo was a popular girl that one day she’s attacked by her bipolar depressed mother and she doesn’t remember a thing. She has to wear long sleeves and gloves all the time and she lost all her popularity, her boyfriend, friends. Everyone whisper and laughs at her, call her a freak cause they don’t know. And Noah lost his parents to a fire and has two little brothers that he loves so much that he wants to lose all his chances of having an adult life to them. He can’t even see them whenever he wants to cause the system sees him as emotionally unstable. He wants their custody as soon as he graduates. And what links them is Mrs. Collins. They both have to go to her office sometimes in the week and talk about their problems. It’s because of her that Echo starts tutoring Noah to gain money for repairing her dead brother's car. And they start talking cause they both want to see their files, Echo wants to know what happens and Noah wants to know where his little brothers live. They end up falling for each other in the way, and they begin to help each other.

We can see a lot of character development in both of them and it’s amazing. This book put me crying a lot. And laughing too. And crying some more. It put me screaming “EVERYTHING IS LOVE AND HURT” and wanting to crawl to a corner and die. Yes, that awesome so why four stars? Cause of what I said, sometimes Noah's parts were too little.