First published on http://ringothecat.wordpress.com/2012... 
 There are only so many original plotlines. There's 'good girl meets bad boy'; there's 'boy with the troubled past'; there's 'girl with the troubled past'. Katie McGarry's debut novel Pushing the Limits combines all of these plotlines promising above all... a love story. Now, telling an unoriginal story is OK. Even Shakespeare wasn't one to tell original stories, you know? The cat even digs teenage romance* as long as there's something to convince you that what you are reading is something special, that somehow *this* is the book you've been waiting to read forever. Lots of books have come close, but none have ever really gotten *there*. Could be characterization. Could be the style. Could be the format. Pushing the Limits has none of these outstanding features. 
 But leaving aside that the plot is completely unoriginal and that the characters are flat and uninspired , what actually did make this novel stand out was the horrendous writing. McGarry ticked me off after a couple of pages when there's this one line that just should have made me stop reading it. I knew this book would become a train wreck but when Noah started calling Echo 'baby' or 'siren' every five seconds, I knew we'd crossed over to fan fiction land and even trains get out of head-on collisions better than this book. Ugh, double ugh!