Review: Breaking the Rules by Katie McGarry

Title: Breaking the Rules
Author: Katie McGarry
Series: Pushing the Limits #1.5
Genre: Contemporary Romance/Road Trip/New Adult
Publisher: Harlequin Teen
Publication Date: December 8th 2014
Edition: ebook, 304 pages
Source: Library
Purchase: Amazon US | Kobo | Barnes and Noble | iBooks

Synopsis:

     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.

Review:

There were times when reading this book when I wasn't sure how much I liked it, or if I liked it at all. I kind of feel like I should have read this book after reading Pushing the Limits, rather than waiting to read it last out of the series.

At this point in the story, Echo and Noah are still sorting through their relationship in many ways. Neither feel very secure if they are going to last past the summer. It had a little too angst for my taste a few times.

They have a lot of ups and downs, plenty of self-doubt, but since I've finished the series I kind of already knew how things would work out for them. 

I love Katie McGarry's books, even though I'm not exactly her target audience. I think she is a great author that knows how to capture not just teens but how people behave in realistic ways. I also really love how she doesn't shy away from mental illness, and anxiety, things that either get ignored in books, or are talked about but not really portrayed in the correct manner.

I actually would have liked to have a book or a short story of Noah and Echo in a *five years later* setting. All the characters really. Beth and Isiah got their happy ending in their books, but I want to see how much they've grown over the course of years.