Review #21: Going Too Far by Jennifer Echols

Going Too Far
Author: Jennifer Echols
Publisher: MTV
Release Date: March 17, 2009
Genre: Young Adult Romance
Pages: 256
Source: Bought
★★★★★

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...

I had read several reviews about Going Too Far before I decided to buy it. I had kept staring at that beautiful cover a few times and asking myself what could have been behind it that so many readers were falling in love with it. Now I understand, now I don't regret myself for having bought and read it.

Actually, I had a copy of Going Too Far since April, and I admit that at that time I wasn't in the mood to read a romance or something, so I just left it on the bookshelf. Until one day and a few hours ago, when I was supposed to read another story, a Fantasy one. I was in the mood to read a good and light and complete romance, so I run into my room and I picked up Going Too Far—not knowing what to expect from this. It was already 11pm, but I could read at least 50 pages until I fell asleep.

I still wasn't so into the story when I stopped, but then in the following day, I picked up again from my bedside table and laid on my sofa. Then I was reading, flipping pages, being sucked by Echols' writing—even though I had felt kinda lost in the beginning, not because of the development of the story, but because of my own English knowledge, and in only a few pages I was already acquainted. I ended up reading Going Too Far all day long, carrying it with me all day long, thinking about how was it going to end all day long. I could not put it down. I read this 256-pages book in a little less than 24 hours, which I had never ever did in my whole life.

I could find myself into that story, with Meg and John everywhere. Each of them had passed through a lot in their lives and maybe that's why they connected so well, so deeply. In front of my eyes, they argued with each other, they learned lessons from each other, they fell in love with each other. And it all was so completely complex. Their relationship and what they said are too complex, but still simple because it catches you and you can relate yourself to it.

And maybe, when you look into someone else's eyes, you feel exactly the same thing Meg felt when she looked into John's:

"His dark eyes challenged me. They were weapons that could hurt me. Here was the worst thing about them: I could tell that if Johnafter loved you, his dark eyes would be beautiful and friendly and warm. So every time he cut me down with a look that was cold and unfriendly and ugly, it was a double insult, a reminder of what I could never have. I found myself avoiding his dark eyes when I could." (page 97)

And maybe, when you are touched on the knee by his hand, you feel exactly the same way Meg did when John did it. Or you are just going to laugh of her reaction:

"My knee radiated heat. As I watched him pull himself from the car and walk casually across the brightly lit parking lot, I thought dumb things: I will never wash my knee again. I will never wash my jeans again. I will cut the knee out of these jeans and sew a pillow to sleep on every night, just to have a molecule of him in my bed with me." (Page 126)

At the end, when I already had listened to many of their long and significant and challenging and entertaining and even lovely conversations, when I already had gone so many times to the diners with them and asked for The Meg Special so many times too, when I already had passed through all this with them, I cried. I cried just like Meg finally did, and it was like I could feel her pain and John's, too, somehow. I was way too absorbed by their story, like I never thought I would when I decided to dive into it.

I'm more than happy that I read this book. I'm happy that I met Meg because she a lonely and beautiful girl who made me think about the way I look at blue (or pink, or orange, or green) haired people and don't even know what is behind them, who they really are, what they have been through in their lives, or why they dye their hair colorful. I'm happy that I found John After (such a charming and handsome guy) because, besides I'm truly in love with him (ha ha) and that he has such a beautiful smile with such cute dimples, he was deep, he was good, he felt so much pain that he could not allow himself to be rid of this pain anymore. And only Meg could do this.

At last, but not least, I'm happy I found in Jennifer Echols' writing something I rarely have found these days. I found the characters' lines so real, fitting wonderfully well, that I kept some of them in my mind and so I was trying to retrospect everything in just a few minutes. I felt the complexity of the whole story—not that I have undestood every single thing, though. But I felt fulfilled. I felt that it was worth reading it.

Overall, it was so much better than I had first imagined and I highly recommend everybody to at least pick it up to read once. Because, well... It has it all. It's funny, romantic, lovely, dangerous, intelligent, real. It's fantastic, incredible. It's unique.

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