Review: Going Too Far by Jennifer Echols

"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...." ~taken from Goodreads


This one’s been on my radar since I first heard of it. I had read Major Crush and The Boys Next Door and out of all the Simon Romantic Comedies (most of which are quite cheesy), hers were my faves.

Meg’s a bad girl, and at the beginning of the book she gets caught, along with three friends, trespassing on a dangerous bridge by the police. Instead of going to court or jail, she gets to spend a week on the night shift with the cop that arrested her. The point being for her and her friends to learn their lesson of what poor choices can lead to. So she spends spring break with Officer John After (who’s a year and a half older than her), driving around town dealing with the local riff raff.

At first, Meg thinks he’s a jerk, and he thinks she’s an idiot. As the story progresses, a somewhat friendship develops. The back and forth between Meg and Officer After is very amusing and interesting. And not all of it is conversation--some is facial expressions and looks exchanged. Meg tries to piece them together so that she can understand what it is about John After. Why is he so obsessed with that bridge? Does he--CAN he--like her, even with the fact that she has blue hair and is practically a criminal? Even if he does like her, he wants to stay there and she wants nothing more than to get out of there. She doesn’t like to be tied down in any way. The two of them are so set in their ways. But they question each other in conversations, finding flaws in the other’s views, causing them to question themselves, to open up.

There are so many more details I could get into, but that would take away from the greatness of discovering them while you read it.