Book Review - Going Too Far

Reviews! Reviews! Never-ending stream of reviews! I really think I need to start participating in more memes just to get some variety cos it feels like all I'm posting is reviews nowadays! Let me know what you think - more variety? or are we good for the time being?

Title: Going Too Far
Author: Jennifer Echols
Date: 27/1/2011 PM
Source: Bought
Description: HOW FAR WOULD YOU GO? All Meg has ever wanted is to get away. Away from high school. Away from her backwater town. Away from her parents who seem determined to keep her imprisoned in their dead-end lives. But one crazy evening involving a dare and forbidden railroad tracks, she goes way too far...and almost doesn't make it back. John made a choice to stay. To enforce the rules. To serve and protect. He has nothing but contempt for what he sees as childish rebellion, and he wants to teach Meg a lesson she won't soon forget. But Meg pushes him to the limit by questioning everything he learned at the police academy. And when he pushes back, demanding to know why she won't be tied down, they will drive each other to the edge -- and over.... (Description taken from Goodreads)

My Review

After reading Jennifer Echols' Forget You in April last year I was really looking forward to getting my hands on this book. I love the way that her characters and their relationships are never straightforward - there is always some little twist that we don't foresee at the beginning and the development of the romance I find to be more realistic than some other YA books. There is animosity at first and over the course of the book the chemistry between Meg and John gets vair interesting.

John After is not your average high school graduate, instead of leaving this small town to go to college he decides to stay and join the Police force and catch the teenagers he used to go to school with doing to dumb-ass stuff that drunk kids do on Saturday nights. For some reason he's out at the railway bridge on patrol the night that Meg and her not-really friends decide to take a drunken walk across the bridge and bring themselves within 5 minutes of being more tragic statistics. For a good chunk of the book you don't really understand John's obsession with the Bridge but by the time we *do* find out both him and Meg have pushed each other a bit too far - with rather unpleasant results.

Despite Meg's terrible attitude towards authority figures I was really intrigued by her strange phobia of being restrained. For ages I was puzzling over the defiant way she lived her life and what the heck might have created this blue-haired hellcat but of course Jennifer Echols pulls another amazing twist out the bag and the truth comes out in the most spectacular fashion. I won't quote the revealing line but I can promise you that it's the most memorable in the entire book.

Out of the contemporary YA books I've read I gotta say that Jennifer Echols' books are some of my favourites, the mixture of brilliantly complex characters, realistic romance and unpredictable plots make for intensely enjoyable reads. I cannot wait for her next book especially if there's gonna be another guy like Johnafter or Doug from Forget You.

My Rating: 4.5 out 5 Stars

If you like the sound of Going Too Far then check out my review of Forget You also by Jennifer Echols

LadyV