Pushing the Limits by Katie McGarry

Published July 31st 2012 by Harlequin Teen   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.

Rating: 4/5

Review:

In anticipation of Dare You To, the upcoming sequel to Pushing the Limits, I read this book.  At first, I thought I wouldn't like it.  It seemed like a stereotypical good girl/bad boy romance.  And it was, to a certain extent, but it was also more than that.

Echo and Noah are two people with compelling problems.  Echo has lost her memory of the night her mother tried to kill her, and is trying desperately to regain it.  Noah's in foster care, and wants nothing more than to be reunited with his younger brothers.

In many romance novels, the whole story is about the relationship.  I liked this book because it wasn't like that.  Echo had her own story, and Noah had his own story, and in Pushing the Limits, their stories just happened to intersect, and they fell in love.  In many parts, the focus shifted away from their relationship.  I enjoyed this because I thought it felt true to life.  In real life, when you enter a relationship, the rest of the world doesn't get put on hold.  In this book, Echo and Noah's individual problems persisted even after they found each other.  The thing that kept me reading, honestly, wasn't to find out what happened between Echo and Noah, it was to find out how their separate problems were resolved.