ARC BOOK REVIEW ~ BEAUTIFUL DISASTER BY JAMIE MCGUIRE

Title: Beautiful Disaster

Author: Jamie McGuire

Publisher: Atria Books

Expected Release Date: August 14, 2012

Previously Self published.

ARC provided by Net Galley

Book Blurb

The new Abby Abernathy is a good girl. She doesn’t drink or swear, and she has the appropriate percentage of cardigans in her wardrobe. Abby believes she has enough distance between her and 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

Book Review

Have you ever read and finished a book and thought, "WTF have I just read?"

Beautiful Disaster is that book for me.

The entire reading was like watching a train wreck--one where I wanted to stop at times but couldn't peel my eyes away...even knowing that this was (for me) a somewhat twisted story spotlighting a very effed-up relationship.

At times I thought there was no way I would recommend this to a young adult--Travis and Abby's relationship was so unhealthy and  on a downward spiral for disaster (hah). But then I thought, was that the author's intention? To give the reader an inside peek of two people who are so unhealthy for each other, but somehow manage to stay together?

I am still clueless.

If the author's intent was to suck you in, she accomplished that. I was sucked in and slightly disturbed by that fact. Although the story line was slightly amateurish at best, I read along--and couldn't stop reading. I had to see where Travis and Abby ended.

Beautiful Disaster itself was filled with some flaws that I couldn't understand. And it promoted violence that I couldn't condone. For Travis is a fighter--yeah, I get that--who jumps easily to his feet to beat the hell out of anyone who attempts to get close to Abby. Twice he attacks a class mate in college, and TWICE, no action was taken?  No suspension, No teachers running in to break the fight?  That was the only implausible thing I found in the writing of this story.

I look back days after reading and think that Beautiful Disaster is a story of extremes: Extreme emotions, extreme drinking, extreme violence.

Did I love it? No
Did I hate it? No

Whatever the case, McGuire wrote a story that did compel me to read it, even though I felt like a passenger on a sinking ship. Even though I believe that Travis and Abby needed a heavy dose of therapy. Even though the ending was predicable and not very plausible. 

Even though I still have no clue exactly how I feel about it.