Non-Review: Breaking the Rules (Pushing the Limits #1.5)

Breaking the Rules (Pushing the Limits #1.5)
By Katie McGarry

Published By: Harper Teen
Publication Date: December 8, 2014
Date Read: March 11, 2023
Genre: YA – Contemporary Romance
Source: Bought
Format: Paperback
Pages: 304

From Goodreads:
A summer road trip changes everything in this unforgettable new tale from acclaimed author Katie McGarry

For new high school graduate Echo Emerson, a summer road trip out west with her boyfriend means getting away and forgetting what makes her so… different. It means seeing cool sights while selling her art at galleries along the way. And most of all, it means almost three months alone with Noah Hutchins, the hot, smart, soul-battered guy who’s never judged her. Echo and Noah share everything — except the one thing Echo’s just not ready for.

But when the source of Echo’s constant nightmares comes back into her life, she has to make some tough decisions about what she really wants — even as foster kid Noah’s search for his last remaining relatives forces them both to confront some serious truths about life, love, and themselves.

Now, with one week left before college orientation, jobs and real life, Echo must decide if Noah’s more than the bad-boy fling everyone warned her he’d be. And the last leg of an amazing road trip will turn… seriously epic.

I’ve been such a huge fan of Katie McGarry’s ever since her debut novel released, and I have read almost everything she has put out. Pushing the Limits has always been my favourite of all of her books, and it holds such a special place in my heart. When Breaking the Rules came out, I put it off for a really long time. Mainly because I felt like where Noah and Echo were, was perfect… and I worried that going back to them was going to ruin my love of their story, or give them more hurt to get through when they don’t need any more. I finally decided to pick it up 10 years later, and see what happens in this book. Honestly, I wish I’d stuck to my original guns and just not bothered with this one.

Breaking the Rules is in no way a bad book. Once again Katie’s storytelling skills and characters were superb… but I just felt like this book wasn’t needed. I felt like we were dredging up drama for the sake of it, and none of it was actually adding to Noah and Echo’s story. In fact I felt like they were going backwards a little. Some of the stuff that they worked through in the first book was kind of getting erased, and I didn’t like that.

I got to around 25% into this book, and I was feeling myself getting into a slump, and I really didn’t have any motivation to pick this one back up. So for the sake of my love of Pushing the Limits, I decided to DNF this one. It’s there and is probably a fantastic read for those of you who are excited to read more of Echo and Noah… but for me, I was happy with where it ended for them in Pushing the Limits and so I am going to pretend that that’s the only book we got for them.

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