Going Too Far - Jennifer Echols

Summary - 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...

Review - I was overjoyed to get this in the mail yesterday, OVAH-JOYED. Thank you so much to Jenn for organising it's journey across the ocean to this uber-grateful Aussie. Now Jenn's act of kindness has nothing to do with the review I am about to give because as I stated in my review of The Boys Next Door, I consider Jenn to be the drug of choice in YA-verse. I was already biased.

And she didn't disappoint. I wasn't sure upon reading the first chapter, I was wary of Meg. I wasn't sure that I could relate or see the world through her eyes but I was oh so very wrong. Meg is a complex, strong, contradictory protagonist with boatloads of humour, snark and moxie. She's tortured, yet exuberant. All her characteristics, her dialogue, her motivations and her decisions are all clear to understand and as such you are just plain sucked into her interplay with John After.

Why do I love Jenn Echols' narrative?

"My knee radiated heat. As I watched him pull himself from the car and walk casually across the brightly lit parking lot, I thought dumb things: I will never wash my knee again. I will never wash those jeans again. I will cut the knees out of those jeans and sew a pillow to sleep on every night, just to have a molecule of him in bed with me."

Echols writes a delightful mix of randomness, absurdity and truth. She doesn't sugarcoat teen world but instead adds the right amount of sweet and sour. Meg and John are in a constant battle for the upper hand and their discussions ranged from barbed, snarky, humorous to doe- eyed. Their relationship is a like a mood swing, you never know when things are going to change up and how it might affect you. I loved the package though. John's seeming calm is at direct contrast to the fire that is Meg. What we soon realise is John's burning up too, for a multitude of reasons. I did at times want to know more about John but the quick pace swept away any reservations I may have possessed.

Echols has attempted a different kind of narrative with this novel. The world is more fully realised and the characters are greatly detailed. I devoured each page with a fervour I wasn't sure I possessed and was fully immersed in each event of Meg and John's lives. I am more hungry than ever to get my hands on future Jenn Echols works and want to congratulate her on a truly wonderful read that made me travel a gamut of emotions and invest in her tremendously real characters.

Publisher: MTV Books / Simon & Schuster
Format: Paperback, 245 pages
Published: March 2009
Origin: USA
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