Review: Walking Disaster by Jamie McGuire

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Walking Disaster
Series: Beautiful #2
Author: Jamie McGuire

SUMMARY
(From Goodreads)

Finally, the highly anticipated follow-up to the New York Times bestseller Beautiful Disaster. Can you love someone too much?
Travis Maddox learned two things from his mother before she died: Love hard. Fight harder.

In Walking Disaster, the life of Travis is full of fast women, underground gambling, and violence. But just when he thinks he is invincible, Abby Abernathy brings him to his knees.

Every story has two sides. In Beautiful Disaster, Abby had her say. Now it’s time to see the story through Travis’s eyes.

MY THOUGHTS

Walking Disaster is the second book in the Beautiful series by author Jamie McGuire.  This book is almost a mirror image of Beautiful Disaster except it is from the point of view of Travis.  I admit that the first book was not a favorite of mine.  I thought Travis was a man who abused Abby mentally and verbally.  Instead of rehashing all of my feelings from the first book, I will just let you read my previous review found HERE.

Now do I still feel the same way after finishing it from Travis’s POV? Well, I still consider Travis a beautiful disaster.  The only difference is now we get pieces of his past that help us to understand why he is so possessive.  I won’t excuse his behavior with that last line, but it does give us insight on how he was shaped into the man he is now. We also get to read about how insecure Travis really is deep down.  On the outside he is the man every girl wants.  What we get to read about though is how Travis is struggling about how he doesn’t feel good enough to be with Abby.  He considers himself a failure and a loser.

Abby is still Abby in this book.  I still want to know how she walks straight without a backbone.  This girl needs to find one stat. I was willing to overlook the lack of backbone this time around though since we knew this would be about Travis.

Can I also mention that cover? The previous book had a ho-hum cover that really didn’t capture my interest. This cover screams SEXY and is perfect for Travis’s story to be wrapped up in.  Kudos to the cover art department on this one.

Overall, this installment in the series was much better than the first.  I am still not a fan of the relationship between Abby and Travis.  They had a hard road that had way too many bumps that were borderline psychotic.  I will mention that the epilogue of this story though was sweet and gave us a peek into the future. While I still wouldn’t go all out and say it was a beautiful disaster of a book, it was one that made you walk a mile in the other persons shoes to see what is really going on inside their mind.

MY RATING

Very Good! I would recommend this book!
*Thank you to Atria Books and NetGalley.  I received this ARC free of charge in exchange for an honest review*

Beautiful Disaster by Jamie McGuire

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Beautiful Disaster
Series: Beautiful #1
Author: Jamie McGuire
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Source: Personal Purchase
ISBN: 9781476712048

SUMMARY
(From Goodreads)

The new Abby Abernathy is a good girl. She doesn’t drink or swear, and she has the appropriate number of cardigans in her wardrobe. Abby believes she has enough distance from the darkness of her past, but when she arrives at college with her best friend, her path to a new beginning is quickly challenged by Eastern University’s Walking One-Night Stand. 

Travis Maddox, lean, cut, and covered in tattoos, is exactly what Abby needs—and wants—to avoid. He spends his nights winning money in a floating fight ring, and his days as the ultimate college campus charmer. Intrigued by Abby’s resistance to his appeal, Travis tricks her into his daily life with a simple bet. If he loses, he must remain abstinent for a month. If Abby loses, she must live in Travis’s apartment for the same amount of time. Either way, Travis has no idea that he has met his match.

MY THOUGHTS

I have contemplated just how I was going to write this review for days.  I am finding it difficult putting my feelings into words and I am finding it even harder trying to make sense of my feelings about this book.

This book has been out for a bit and if you haven’t heard what this story is about by now, then just take a look at the thousands of reviews it already has.  For me, I am going to skip the rundown of the synopsis and just try to make my emotions cooperate long enough to explain my thoughts as best as I can.

I want to say that the first part of this book — say about a quarter of it — I really liked the characters of Abby and Travis.  Before they become a couple and the bet is wagered, I loved their interaction and hidden emotions.  Travis was playful, Abby was borderline flirty, but they establish friendship first before falling into bed.  This was a plus for me because so many books skip straight to sex and forget about the friendship part of a relationship.

Now this is where the story started to go downhill for me.  Travis — is for lack of descriptive terms in my head at this moment — a beautiful disaster.  He is possessive, violent, destructive, and borderline psychotic.  Now in some books this could work to the advantage for a tortured and redeemable hero.  In this book though it was not.  I seriously started thinking that this man needed to be locked up somewhere and treated for mental illness.  Yes, he could be sweet at times with a little bit of playfulness thrown in on some pages, but the majority of the time he was just a wreck.

Abby didn’t have much backbone either in the fact that she kept putting up with it and running back to him.  Seriously? This is what you expect in a relationship? I think after the first violent episode of destruction from Travis, I would have took my belongings and ran as far away as possible.  There were so many parts in this book that Abby was out of character. For example, if she is trying to be a better person why is she encouraging Travis to beat the crap out of a boy just for whistling at her in a cafeteria?  She also sits in her room and cries when Travis goes off on a little tantrum and brings TWO girls home one night and sleeps with them ( noises and laughter included ) in the living room.  How can a woman love someone who thinks this is acceptable and okay.  (Lord forbid my husband and I ever have a fight and he tries to do this. He would be out on the curb in two seconds flat.)

With all this being said though, I did carry on and finish the book.  This is in no way a happy-go-lucky or feel-good romance story.  This is a dark and edgy book that will leave you on either side of the review camp.  Some will think this story is one of the best books on the market right now, while others will be appalled and cringing when they hear about it again.  I for one would be on the good side for the first part of this book, but I wanted to run and hide for the last half of it.

MY RATING

If the library doesn’t have it, don’t worry about reading it!