Review: Going Too Far by Jennifer Echols

Title: Going Too Far 
Author: Jennifer Echols
Publisher:  Pocket Books/MTV Books
Pages: 245
Release date: March 17th 2009
Genre: Contemporary YA; romance
Source: Bought at The Book Depository
Find out more: Amazon ; Goodreads 

Goodreads description:

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....

First sentence:

"That's the worst idea I ever heard," I told Eric.

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

This is my first Jennifer Echols book, but I'd heard great things about her novels. Going Too Far lived up to my expectations, and it won't be my last of her novels! I read this in one sitting, and it's sort of an emotional roller coaster ride - it had me laughing at times, gasping when a secret was revealed, and angry, wanting to shake the main characters when they couldn't just be together and be happy.

At first, Going Too Far was hard for me to get into. I didn't like Meg at all in the beginning, and I didn't get why she acts the way she does. Her irresponsible decisions and the way she treats other people really annoyed me. I also found strange how much she disliked John, much more than the other cops. That made everything a little too obvious, in my opinion. But over the course of the book, Meg's character really grew on me. Once I found out about her insecurities and her past little by little, I could understand why she is that way and I could relate to her.

Even though I didn't like Meg at the beinning, the characters in Going Too Far are great. Meg and John are dynamic and complex characters. I loved finding out more and more about them and gradually getting to understand them. The way Jennifer Echols hinted at their problems but didn't reveal their secrets until the end had me guessing throuhgout the book. However, once John's secret is revealed, we don't find out too much about how that's affected him, and I really would have liked to see that elaborated on. None of the other characters are as fully-developed as Meg and John and are mainly there to show the reader what kind of people the two main characters are, but they still have some quirks that make them unique. I really enjoyed reading about Meg's relationship with her parents.

The chemistry between John and Meg is great, and the reader really feels the vibes between the two. I loved the romance aspect, but I also liked that this book isn't only about the romance - it's more about how these two people change each other and how both develop so much over the course of the novel. I especially liked the last scene and that it's between Meg and her parents instead of between Meg and John, as that made the book less corny and really showed Meg's character growth.

I feel bad about criticizing this, since as far as I know this isn't the author's fault, but I really dislike the cover and the title of this book. The cover screams superficial romance and the title Going Too Far makes it seem (or at least made me think) like this book is about sex/whether or not to have sex, etc. I don't think that does this book justice, and I didn't want to read this in public and had to hide it from my parents - it almost made me not want to read Going Too Far at all.

Despite my dislike for the cover and title and my problems getting into this novel at the beginning, Going Too Far is a great, fun read. A sweet romance with fully-developed characters and great character growth. I'm looking forward to reading more by Jennifer Echols in the future, even though most of her books have these embarrassing covers...