Going Too Far - Jennifer Echols

Going Too Far by Jennifer Echols
Publisher: Pocket Books/MTV Books
Publication Date: March 17, 2009
Source/Format: Won || Paperback

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.... (from Goodreads)

Going Too Far is my second foray into the works of Jennifer Echols, and now I'm absolutely certain I need to catch up on reading the rest of her work. I love how she brought her complex characters to life on the page once again, and wove them into a story that was intense, heartbreaking and highly emotional. 

Meg and John are two characters that I can definitely root for, and that made all the difference when reading this novel. If I hadn't cared about either of them, I wouldn't have been as invested in the outcome of their story. Echols has the capability of convincing me that her characters are worth caring about, and I admire the fact that she was, yet again, able to do so with this book.

Meg is, for all intents and purposes, your basic troubled teen, who gets into a sticky situation early in the story. Eventually, it's easy to notice that she's intelligent, sassy, a good girl at heart... and that she's trying to hide something. Once her secret is revealed, it is easy to hope that she gets the happy ending she so deserves.

John After (and what a name!) is pretty darn amazing for a male in a contemporary YA. I didn't mind him keeping me company on my long plane ride over to the Philippines, because his scenes were just plain awesome. His experiences as a cop (that Meg was privy to, of course) were pretty cool. I loved how he also appeared to be headstrong, intelligent, kind and just plain determined to do the right thing. It was very easy for me to like him, and I just... well, I simply enjoyed him.

Obviously, there's romance in this book - and sparks definitely fly between these two. Initially, it appears like the attraction is purely on a physical basis (which would have already been pretty hot on its own), but I like that before anything physical actually happens, these two get to know each other.  They form a friendship, which starts out tentative, but ends up flourishing as they learn more about each other. Even though it appeared that they were very different from each other at the start, they discovered there was something in common for them to bond about, and that's where it all began. I liked how they had obstacles to deal with in their relationship, and I do like how they worked things out between them as the book progressed.

I thoroughly enjoyed Going Too Far, particularly because it gave me the opportunity to meet John After. It's a fairly quick contemporary read, with a couple of steamy scenes to make things even more awesome, and a sprinkling of a good amount of personal issues for each of the characters to deal with. Echols certainly has a knack for writing these realistic tales, and I am definitely encouraged to read more of her work.