(Website, Blog, , , )Series: Pushing the Limits #3
Published by Harlequin on November 1st 2014
Genres: Love & Romance, Runaways, Social Issues, Young Adult
Pages: 445
Format: Paperback
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The girl with straight A's and the perfect life—that's who people expect Rachel Young to be. So the private school junior keeps secrets from her wealthy family…and she's just added two more to the list. One involves racing strangers down dark country roads in her Mustang GT. The other? Seventeen-year-old Isaiah Walker—a guy she has no business even talking to. But after the foster kid with the tattoos and intense gray eyes comes to her rescue, she can't get him out of her mind.
The last thing Isaiah needs is to get tangled up with a rich girl who wants to slum it on the south side for kicks. But when their shared love of street racing puts their lives in jeopardy, Isaiah and Rachel will have six weeks to come up with a way out. Six weeks to discover just how far they'll go to save each other.
If you haven’t figured it out yet from my other gushing reviews, Katie McGarry is easily one of my favorite writers. Her stories are honest and raw, addictive and encapsulating. There’s a reason I was recommending her to anyone and everyone that even showed a remote interest at ApollyCon. Her books are just good. Good, meaning there isn’t a word to describe how much I enjoy escaping into this world.
Isaiah has been part of this series since the beginning. He was Noah’s best friend in Pushing the Limits, a portion of Beth’s guilt in Dare You To, and then he got his own story. Every character that McGarry writes is different than her other characters. Yes, they are all broken in some form or fashion but that’s life—that’s how people are. Picking up the pieces, discovering who they are, and finding love along the way is what makes these stories so addictive. It’s not the circumstance that’s relatable but the characters. Or maybe you can relate to the circumstance. Everyone has a different path, and Isaiah had to find his. I wanted him to find love, especially after Beth broke his heart. He had tattoos and piercings to give off a rough exterior, but the boy underneath that just wanted to be loved made my heart ache.
I don’t understand a thing about cars. Seriously—nothing. And yet, I got Rachel. I understood where she came from and why she just wanted to be seen. Everyone feels overshadowed or invisible at some point in his or her life, but that’s the life that Rachel lived. Her voice rang true and resonated with me, even if she did speak a language I don’t understand—cars. She and Isaiah shared that connection, one formed with grease and Mustangs. While she made Isaiah feel things that he had never experienced, being raised in the system and misunderstanding what he had felt, I also liked her relationship with her brothers. West and Ethan weren’t her only brothers, but they were the ones that could relate. West was not even a year older and Ethan was her twin. The three were as thick as thieves but still managed to hide things from one another. Through it all, they did it—the lying, the protecting, and the worry—because they loved one another. The Young family was complicated. What family isn’t?
Can we just talk about the connection to the Thunder Road series? My first McGarry novel was Nowhere But Here, and I might have smiled like an insane person when I discovered how she was going to connect the series. Maybe it’s why I loved Isaiah so much. Either way, I can’t wait to see his character again, either in the last book in the Pushing the Limits series or in one of the Thunder Road novels. Sign me up!
Romance and real life go hand-in-hand. Her novels give me hope. There are happily-ever-afters in life, and don’t let anyone tell you any differently. Finding yourself is just as important as finding love, and through a guy with tattoos and a girl with a secret car obsession, McGarry has shown that again.
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About Katie McGarry
Katie McGarry was a teenager during the age of grunge and boy bands and remembers those years as the best and worst of her life. She is a lover of music, happy endings, reality television, and is a secret University of Kentucky basketball fan.
Katie is the author of full length YA novels, PUSHING THE LIMITS, DARE YOU TO, CRASH INTO YOU, TAKE ME ON, BREAKING THE RULES, and NOWHERE BUT HERE and the e-novellas, CROSSING THE LINE and RED AT NIGHT. Her debut YA novel, PUSHING THE LIMITS was a 2012 Goodreads Choice Finalist for YA Fiction, a RT Magazine’s 2012 Reviewer’s Choice Awards Nominee for Young Adult Contemporary Novel, a double Rita Finalist, and a 2013 YALSA Top Ten Teen Pick. DARE YOU TO was also a Goodreads Choice Finalist for YA Fiction and won RT Magazine’s Reviewer’s Choice Best Book Award for Young Adult Contemporary fiction in 2013.
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