Pushing the Limits Read-A-Long Week 1

I absolutely adored Pushing the Limits, so I’m excited to be participating in this read-a-long! 🙂 Let’s jump right into answering the questions!

1. The story starts out with Echo’s thoughts on how she wants to answer her therapist’s questions (snarky and caustically truthful) which are quickly juxtaposed to how she does (milque-toasty and banal). Who do you think she hides the truth for more, her parents or herself?

Echo is definitely hiding the truth from everyone. She doesn’t want to face it herself, she doesn’t want to tell others about it, and she doesn’t want to confront her parents. She’s having a hard time processing what happened and hasn’t actually dealt with it.

2. We see Mrs. Collins, the school therapist, interact with both Echo and Noah in the first few chapters. From those interactions, what do you think of her? Is she a prototypical caricature of state care? Or do you think she’s there to make an honest difference in the lives of those she’s there to help?

At the very very beginning, I wasn’t sure. But I quickly decided that she seems pretty genuine, and Echo seems a little shocked at that. She really wants to help people and get to the bottom of serious issues. She’s not one to respond to intimidation or bribes to just brush things under the table.

3. Noah has two friends, Beth and Isaiah, who have his back no matter what–through thick and thin–and he has theirs. Consequently, his life is a little easier because he has two people who know about his situation. Echo’s closest friend prior to “the incident” was Grace, and she will barely speak to her in school now. Do you think Echo would have had an easier time coping and moving on if she had friends like Noah does?

Yes I definitely think she would have had an easier time. Her friends practically shunned her, and that basically taught Echo that she was now a freak, or a problem child. I’m sure that really got under her skin and made her feel like a freak, and made her feel like she had things to hide from the social world.

4 . Echo fixates on a colorful ribbon that sits on the school counselor’s desk during their one-on-one sessions. Do you think this is a case of “Oh, look at the pretty ribbon. Let me zone out while staring at it,” or could it have a deeper significance!

It definitely has a deeper significance! Anything given that much thought and attention is clearly going to be important and play a big role! 😉 I remember when I first read it, it struck me as weird that so much attention would be given to just a ribbon. Anything that insignificant that’s given a lot of attention, probably has some important meaning!

5 . Noah and the jacket… Already when Noah and Echo meet for the first time, Noah got angry when Echo forgot her Jacket pg 34. Then on Echo’s Birthday party Noah gave Echo his jacket when he saw that she forgot hers. pg 54. There is a significance behind his anger when Echo has no coat and it tells already so much about Noah!

a) Why is Noah so fixated on Echo and her Jacket?

Because he TOTALLY loves her!!! He wants her to be all warm and cuddly and perfect! Swoon!!

b) Show us your favorite jacket! Either with you having it on or alone!

Okay I’m really lame. My favourite jacket is just a fleece, so I’m not even going to take a picture of it! XD But I love it because I kept telling my boyfriend I didn’t need a new jacket, but he kept insisting. Finally I gave in and we looked together online and ordered one, and now it’s my favourite jacket and I wear it all the time! So thanks, babe! ♥

6. Echo wears gloves all the time to hide her scars. Not only for her sake, but obviously also for the others. When Noah sees Echo’s scars for the first time he’s shocked.

a) Do you think this was the moment he began to see Echo in a different light?

I think this is definitely when he starts to realize that there’s something more going on with her. She’s not just a troubled teen who has to go to therapy for ‘stress’ or some silly reason. She has something she’s desperately trying to hide from the world — something dark in her past.

b)Show us your favorite pair of gloves!

Okay these aren’t quite my favourite gloves, but they’re close enough! I have another pair (currently in storage) that are almost exactly the same but the black and white pattern is different, and the coloured fingers are brighter (like yellow, bright green, bright pink, and blue, instead of the slightly darker colours shown on these gloves).