Going Too Far by Jennifer Echols

[description from Amazon]

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:

After I finished this book, I didn't like it THAT much. I didn't think it was bad, but it didn't exactly blow me away like it seemed to do to everyone else. It was just kind of average; probably 3/5 stars. I never felt like I got what I was expecting based of the summary; I wanted something a little more. More exciting, more intense. Just more. But a few minutes after I finished, when I was still thinking about the book, I realized that I actually really liked it. Once I gave it more thought, I realized that the summary was right about the whole "pushing each other to the edge" thing; it just wasn't in the way I expected.

I don't really know how to explain what I was expecting from this book. The best way I can describe my expectations is that I thought their romance would be really intense and move really fast, therefore "pushing it to the edge." It was like that, but Meg, the narrator, described it in a much more subdued way. She doesn't really like to reveal her feelings and she doesn't make a huge deal about things, so you could say that's why it didn't seem that intense until you really thought about it.

As far as the "pushing each other to the edge" thing goes, they pushed each other in a way that didn't test their romance, as I thought they would, but rather to test themselves. As they fell in love, they both encountered things in their past that have given them their worst traits. Neither Meg nor John wanted to deal with these things, but were forced to so that they could figure out their feelings for each other. They were pushed towards the edges of their personal comfort zones.

Them being pushed to the edge of their comfort zones turned out to be a lot better than what I was expecting, because this allowed for huge character growth. Meg and John were already realistic characters, with quirks and insecurities and all that. But once they were forced to face their pasts and problems, they realized what they were doing to the people around them and what their problems were. Although I felt that, after they changed, sometimes they acted a little too...ooey gooey, their changes were for the best and strengthened their already strong romance.

Going Too Far is a great book that only gets better once you think about it.

8.5/10