Meg is your typical bad girl – blue hair, motorcycle, Peer Pressure T-shirt, and all. No one is surprised when she is caught drunk, on the railroad bridge, being felt up and down by pothead Eric. Her choice of accompanying friends – overachieving, straight-laced Tiffany and Brian – was surprising when it seems like all Meg cares about is partying. What she wants more than anything however is to get out of her small town, away from her past, and away from the dead-end diner her parents run.
John After is your average small-town cop. He’s 100% dedicated to his duty to enforce the law and protect others. Never mind that he’s barely out of high school and had a chance to get out of town. Who needs time to party and live their life when there are lessons to be taught and tragedies to be prevented? In her week of remediation, that’s exactly what John plans to do with Meg, but instead she challenges everything he stands for and more.
Bad girl meets good boy. It doesn’t have quite the ring to it but it’s an appealingly fresh concept, turning the more common stereotype on its head. I’ve liked the sound of Going Too Far for awhile now and I’m not sure why I didn’t pick it up, as I seem to be the last to do so. Maybe I was put off by the hype or thought I wouldn’t relate to Meg. It wasn’t until Janice’s persuasive recommendation of it (with the concurrence of others) that I knew I needed to read it, and urgently so. Since it isn’t available at my local libraries and was out of stock at my local bookstores, I breathed a sigh of relief when a friend was able to pick it up for me on her way home, because at the time no other book seemed to do.
While as expected I didn’t exactly connect to Meg or understand her motivations at first, I knew was in for the long haul from the first page. Maybe she was so attractive simply because she was so different but I wanted to know what made her tick. It didn’t take long for things to get even more interesting when Officer John After arrived on the scene. He’s out to make Meg pay for her blatant rebellion and at first she doesn’t know how to combat him. It’s hard to peel your eyes from the book after Meg and John start verbally sparring. They know how to push each other’s buttons which makes for some pretty entertaining passages. While both characters are very enigmatic at first – for example I couldn’t for the life of me guess what John’s actual age was – everything made sense and felt real in the end when the big revelation in Meg’s life could have been cliché or sentimental and John’s big skeleton-in-the-closet wasn’t aired out until the final pages. Although I wanted a little more from the rushed ending the conclusion was believable and satisfying. The recommenders were right -Going Too Far is a perfect pageturner for when you’re in the mood for some pick-me-up contemporary YA.
Second Opinions
Angieville Review
Chachic’s Book Nook Review
Emily and Her Little Pink Notes Review
Giraffe Days Review
Janicu’s Book Blog Review
Persnickety Snark Review
See Michelle Read Review
The Book Smugglers Review
Yay, I loved that you enjoyed reading this.
It’s one of my favorite contemporary YA reads this year. It made me pick up the rest of Jennifer Echols’ books and I think this is the best out of all of them.
Don’t you just love it when a fellow book blogger persuades you to read something and you end up liking it?
I enjoyed it a lot.
Thanks for chiming in your strong rec of it as well.
I was so happy to see that you reviewed this (because it meant you read it!)
I think you’re right about Meg – if I think about it, she seemed to do things without a reason I could understand at first, but it was fascinating to learn what made her tick, and I loved her interactions with John. Glad you liked it.
I hope the reader’s block is clearing up…?
Happy to oblige. Thanks for the rec! Reader’s block is def starting to clear up.