Review: Beautiful Disaster – Jamie McGuire

My rating: 4/5 stars

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Abby Abernathy doesn’t drink, she doesn’t swear and she works really hard.  She believes she has buried her dark past but her dreams of putting this behind her are dashed when she meets Travis Maddox.  Travis is a walking one-night stand, sexy, muscular and covered in tattoos.  He is everything Abby had hoped to avoid.  Intrigued by Abby’s resistance to his charms, Travis makes a bet with her, in hopes to make her part of his life.  Travis has no idea that he has met his match.

My thoughts:

I would not be true to myself in reviewing books and not review this one.  I have read this book numerous times and I am utterly in love with it.

The character of Travis is unlike any other romance type novel I have read.  Don’t get me wrong, his character traits are definitely stereotypical for this type of novel but I have never connected with a male character in a romance novel as much as I did with Travis.  His character is full of raw emotion and to see his character progression throughout the book is truly something else.  I was instantly in love with him.

As a character Abby is as you would expect in this type of novel.  She resists his charms and doesn’t want anything to do with someone like Travis.  Abby was not my favourite character in this book, even though it is written in first person from her point of view.  She is mild for most of the book and sometimes I could see where Travis’s frustration with her came from.  However, once more elements of her past are revealed it is clear to see why she is the way that she is, she just takes some warming up to.

I liked the pace of the story line as it always left me wanting more, the first time I read it I finished it in one sitting!  There is always the issue with romance novels that the characters get together too quickly and then there is nowhere for the plot to go but this really moved at an excellent pace and was well judged.

I could not review this book without mentioning some of the bad reviews I have seen for this book.  There are many complaints about the behaviour displayed by Travis in this novel; that it should raise red flags.  I did not interpret Travis in a dangerous way and he was never a threat to Abby.  I personally interpreted Travis’s behaviour as passionate, you could really feel his desperation and want to be with Abby.

As I said, I have read this book numerous times and have also read Walking Disaster which is the same plot line but from Travis’s point of view.  Walking Disaster really helped me to understand his behaviour and it was refreshing to read a whole novel from the male perspective.

Overall, if you are looking for a romance novel to relax with and to be totally engrossed in, this one is for you.  I hope you end up loving Travis as much as I do.

Do you have a suggestion for the next book to add to my bookshelf? Let me know in comments.