Title: Pushing the Boundaries
(Off Limits #1)
Author: Stacey Trombley
Publication date: January 16th, 2016
Category/Genre: Young Adult Contemporary Romance
Myra goes to Haiti with one goal: take the photograph that will win a scholarship and prove to her uber-traditional family that she has what it takes to be a photographer instead of a doctor. Her camera has always been her shield against getting too close to anyone, but she didn’t expect the hot teen translator who has an ability to see past her walls.
Elias needs his job as a translator to provide for his siblings. He can’t afford to break the rule forbidding him from socializing with a client. Except this girl Myra insists on going outside the city to capture the perfect picture, and he steps in as her guide in order to keep her safe.
The deeper they travel into the country, the harder they fall for each other. Now they’re both taking risks that could cost each other their dreams.
If they get too close—it could ruin both their lives.
Elias needs his job as a translator to provide for his siblings. He can’t afford to break the rule forbidding him from socializing with a client. Except this girl Myra insists on going outside the city to capture the perfect picture, and he steps in as her guide in order to keep her safe.
The deeper they travel into the country, the harder they fall for each other. Now they’re both taking risks that could cost each other their dreams.
If they get too close—it could ruin both their lives.
Buy Links: Amazon
3 “Haiti & First Love” Stars
ARC via NetGalley
Thank you, Entangled Crush!
Pushing the Boundaries had an intriguing
premise: first-world girl passionate about photography travels to third-world
country in search of its beauty, then falls in love with local boy.
There was a lot of room
for this to develop into a beautiful story about how first love can (or at
least can try to) overcome cultural shock and people’s differences, but the
message got lost in execution.
The writing was good—it
could’ve used a little more description, especially in the beginning, but it
was strong enough to not take me away from the story. The setting was unique,
which made me want to read the book in the first place. But what really dragged
this story down for me was the main character, Myra. I wanted to like her. I really did. She had
enough things going for her initially, but those things ended up not being
enough to make me like her. Look, Myra wasn’t all bad. First, she wasn’t the
usual priviledge white American girl, who thought the world belonged to her and
looked down at others. Aside from a few misteps in the beginning of the story,
it sounded like she was really just ignorant of the circunstances surrounding
Haiti and its people. Once she had a better understanding (as much as one can
gather in a few days), she seemed to have her head and heart in the right place.
Myra was also passionate enough about something to risk disappointing her
mother to achieve her dreams, which means she wasn’t just a girl worried about
material things or daydreaming 24/7 about the next boy.
With all that, though,
Myra still managed to be unlikable to me.
My biggest problem with
Myra was how selfish she could be when it came to Elias, the much more likable
love interest. Maybe, in retrospect, the fact that Elias had a lot more going
for him might’ve hurt her case.
Elias was a hard-working
young man worried about others more than himself. He put up with his boss’
boderline abusive attitude to guarantee his family had food in the end of the
day, and that his little brother could get the education he needed. He was always
thinking about his family and the people who needed him. In the one time Elias
acted thinking solely about his wants/needs, he paid for that greatly.
So it was extremely easy
to like Elias, which means Myra had to work extra hard to get the same reaction
from readers.
Judging from how she
acted in the second half of the story, I don’t think she was too worried about
her likability at all. That can work if you can sustain your premise and keep
your readers hooked despite the fact that they can’t really connect with the
main character...which wasn’t the case here, as far as I was concerned.
I needed more of Haiti’s
culture, more action, more tension in order to stay engaged. Sure, the little
we got to see about that country and its people was the thing that kept me
reading, but it still wasn’t enough to make me rate this book anything above
3 stars. Plus, since this is an Entangled Crush book and they always deliver
the cutest romances, I was expecting something along those lines. Unfortunately,
the insta love didn’t work well here, and the happy ending felt a bit surreal
and rushed.
*If you liked this review (or not), if you read the book (or not), come say hello and leave your comments bellow.
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