Rowena’s review of Going too Far by Jennifer Echols.
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…
Meg is a troubled teen who seems to be running toward something that is away from her small town home. She’s counting down the days when she can move away from home, from her parents who keep her chained to their going nowhere restaurant. It’s her senior year and she can’t wait until Spring Break. She’s going to Florida to see the shores of another state, far away from home. This spring break is going to give her a taste of what awaits her when she graduates from high school but before she can go away for Spring Break, she gets into some trouble that lands her on Officer After’s shit list and she has to spend her spring break shadowing him on his night shift, paroling the streets of their small town.
Her punishment came when her and a few of her friends took their good time to the bridge in town where a few years ago, a couple of teenagers were killed on that same bridge when they got caught by an oncoming train.
Officer John After has little patience for teenagers who don’t have a care for their lives and for teenagers who think that they’re untouchable by the kiss of death. He doesn’t take kindly to people who don’t have a care for caution. The bridge has been a sore spot for him and he’s become obsessed with that bridge so when he catches Meg and her friends over on the bridge, drinking and what not, he sets out to teach them a lesson.
Meg’s punishment had her strapped to John After while he was on his night shift as the town cop. He took his job seriously and before Meg knows what’s what, her and John are getting to know each other as more than just Bad Cop and Juvenile Delinquent.
This is the first Jennifer Echols book that I’ve read and to say that I enjoyed is putting it lightly. This book was moving and it pulled at your heart strings. This story more than entertained me, it captivated me. It was beautiful story about two young people finding their way in life with each other to hold on to. I enjoyed this story a great deal and thought that it was a fantastic read.
John was a strong character, one who was so tense with emotion that you wanted to be the shoulder he cried on. You wanted to make him come to grips with his issues and you wanted to be there for him. He had the weight of the world on his shoulder and he was bound and determined to save everyone but the one person he wanted to save the most. I connected with John and I felt his pain. I wanted to be the person who helped him fight his demons and I think that says a lot about the kind of stories that Echols write.
Meg was a complex character that at times, I didn’t understand but over the course of the book, her personality shined and as the story unfolded, my sense of Meg began to sharpen until my heart broke. She was a fabulous character who came into her own by the end of the book. She was such a strong character that I couldn’t help but love her. She felt like a little sister to me and watching her fall in and out of trouble made me root her on all the more.
I enjoyed getting to know both John and Meg. I thought this was a fantastically written story and it was compelling and entertaining and I couldn’t ask for more from a fictional story. This book was great.
Grade: 4.75 out of 5
This book is available from MTV. You can buy it here or here in e-format.
Great review! I really loved this book too, and watching John & Meg fall in love was wonderful. It’s not a sugary-coated story, but very real, with pain and heartache and confusion, which made it all the more poignant. I definitely plan to read more by this author.
I know, right? I thought it was such a cute book that made me get all teary eyed. John and Meg were great together but they were also great on their own too. I can’t wait to read more from this author.
I can’t wait to read this!! Soon, I promise, soon. 😛