Author: Katie McGarry
Release Date: July 31st, 2012
Publisher: Harlequin Teen
Pages: 384
Age Group: Young Adult
Source: Finished copy for review

Rating: ★★★★

"I won't tell anyone, Echo. I promise." Noah tucked a curl behind my ear. It had been so long since someone touched me like he did. Why did it have to be Noah Hutchins? His dark brown eyes shifted to my covered arms. "You didn't do that-did you? It was done to you?" No one ever asked that question. They stared. They whispered. They laughed. But they never asked.
So wrong for each other...and yet so right.
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.

Pushing the Limits really ended up being quite an amazing book. I had a little trouble getting into it at the start, because it really seems to start off in a very low mood. Granted it persists throughout the book, there are a lot of amazing high moments that really do this book great justice. Katie's writing is phenomenal to say the least, and you will be able to see that in the ways that she conveys the different moods throughout the book. And as you can probably guess by what I have been saying so far, Pushing the Limits is driven by the different moods throughout it. All the way from extremely depressing, to tearfully happy.

For a contemporary, Pushing the Limits has an extremely rich and enveloping story. Once I was able to get passed some of the more depressing aspects of the book, I was really able to be pulled into Echo and Noah's story. I will talk more about them later on, but I just want to give Katie some credit for creating such an amazing contemporary story, it is easily one of the better ones that I've read. It does have it's faults, but it wasn't really enough to take away from how awesome this story is.

Echo and Noah are absolutely amazing. I have a lot of characters that I consider favorites, and these two are among that list for sure. I am having such a hard time trying to come up with a way to explain just how amazing and touching these two characters are. They have both gone through so much, when I originally heard of this book I had it stuck in my head that is was only Echo going through things, but I couldn't of been further away from the truth. Noah has been through just as much trauma as Echo and I really feel like that drove their relationship even more, because they were able to connect with each other on a level that you can't even begin to imagine. I felt like when they were together they were able to escape everything going on in their own lives. Does this mean that their relationship was perfect? Not by a long shot, they had their lows throughout the book, but I think that really helped to show how much they truly cared about each other.

I'm not going to go into any detail about what Echo and Noah went through, it's all extremely sad and it's hard to see how it's all still playing such a huge burden on their daily lives. While a lot of the things that go on in the book are sad, there were also a lot of happy moments as I have mentioned several times. The ending of Pushing the Limits was a good mix of that sad and happy vibe you get from this story, I loved the ending. I wish I could talk about it more, because it just seemed like a perfect fit for this story even if there were a few things that I would of changed around just a little. I think Katie did such a great job with this book, and was able to wrap it up in that same amazing and touching manner.

I would highly recommend picking up this book. I know for a fact that Echo and Noah make my list for favorite characters of the year. That aside, this is an amazing book I can't deny that. I enjoyed Pushing the Limits for everything it brought, and I think Katie did an amazing job writing a book that can really tug on the hearts of those reading it. You would really be doing yourself a favor by reading this book whenever you get the chance to.