Pushing The Limits by Katie McGarry

Release date: July 25 2012

Publisher: Harlequin Teen Australia

Number of Pages: 376

My rating: 5/5

Ohmygod, this is one of my favorite books ever now! This book is just so amazing on so many levels. I still tear up whenever I think about it. It kept me up at night, reading it. I couldn't sleep after finishing cause it was on my mind. It made me laugh, smile, and cry. Such an amazing book.

I'm not usually a fan of realistic fiction. I've only really read this, Before I fall, and If I Stay. Many, I thought those were pretty good, but Pushing the Limits just blew those right out of the water.

Pushing the limits is told in a dual perspective. We have Noah, the bad boy, and Echo, the sort-of-popular outside freak with the scars on her arms. The great thing about Pushing the Limits is that the two voices are very different. You can easily tell who's talking.

Echo was a great character. She was popular a few years ago, but then she became a freak after an incident with her mother, which she doesn't remember. Echo's great. Absolubtely fantastic. Her brother also died a few years ago in Afghanistan, and she really misses him. Echo was just great. She wasn't annoying or whiny, and she had a lot of issues to go through. She has low self confidence, and refuses to show her scars in public.

Noah was kind of like your typical foster kid. He was pretty badass, and he has a reputation for being a stoner and sleeping with many, many people. Surprisingly, even though I was almost certain I would hate Noah, I love him. He has issues of his own, and he is very loyal to his friends. He also has two brothers who are also in foster care, and he was trying to gain custody of them. I had a real soft spot for Noah, because even though he was a stoner, and he's a bit of a dickhead, he cares deeply for his brothers, and that first scene with him and his brothers made my cry.

I loved every secondary character, especially Isaiah and Beth, who are Noah's best friends. Beth is pretty snarky and awesome, and Isaiah is just so nice. I did like Lila, who was Echo's best friend, but not as much as I liked Noah's.
The character development is just amazing. If you look at what the characters were like in the start of the book and the end, they're just so different. Every character is well rounded and individual, and none of the characters meshed together in my head.

The plot was excellent. We follow Echo and Noah as they go through a massive emotional journey. Echo wants to remember the incident with her mother, and Noah wants to gain custody of his brothers.

The one teeny tiny flaw in this book is the relationship between Ashley and Echo. It was pretty vague. We know that Ashley used to babysit Echo, and then she fell in love with her dad, but we don't know much else.

The writing was sensational. I did spot a few missing quotation marks, but oh well, at least there wasn't any typos (well, not any that I spotted anyway).
Pushing the Limits is a definite must read for everyone.