Going Too Far is a novel by author Jennifer Echols. The story follows the main character, Meg, a 17-year-old girl who is rebelling against her parents and even the authorities. At the beginning of the book, Meg and her friends are arrested for underage drinking and trespassing on a train bridge in their small town in Alabama. As a punishment for their behavior, three of the four teens have to shadow a cop, a paramedic, and a firefighter for the week of their spring break vacation from school. Meg is paired with the cop - the same one that arrested her in the first place. What Meg doesn't realize, at first, is the cop is a boy that she attended high school with just a year prior to her arrest.

As the week of punishment unfolds, Officer Jon After and Meg grow so close that they plan to have a romantic rendezvous as soon as her punishment is complete. John uncovers the secret that Meg has been keeping, which she is a cancer survivor. In the process, Meg also uncovers John's secret, which is that his brother and his brother's girlfriend died on the same train bridge that he arrested Meg for trespassing.

Meg helps John to come to emotional terms with his loss by suggesting the city install a surveillance camera that dispatches directly to the police if someone enters the bridge. She thinks this will emotionally free John from the bond he feels to protecting others from dying on the bridge. John helps Meg to come to terms with the fact she's going to live and she no longer has to live life as if she might die tomorrow.