Review: Beautiful Disaster – Jamie McGuire

INTENSE. DANGEROUS. ADDICTIVE.
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 wants—and needs—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.

Series:  Beautiful #1
Release Date:  April 14, 2012
Publisher:  Atria Books
Source:  Amazon, via my own wallet
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Reviewer’s Thoughts:

I’d heard a lot about this book. Some loved it, others not so much. I’m glad I finally picked this one up. It had all the teenage angst you’d expect in a New Adult book, but jamie McGuire was able to balance all the teenage “stuff” with two young people forging their path to the future.

Abby Abernathy was hoping the anonymity of being a college freshman would allow her to start a new life, one not tainted by the past with her father. But Abby soon discovers that the anonymity she craved will be hard to keep when she catches the eye of Travis Maddox. Travis is the guy on campus that all the girls want and the guy wish they were. He doesn’t apologize for the one night stands he has or the fights he participates in. When he meets Abby, everything changes.

Some people may not like Travis because when we first meet him he is a complete man-whore. But the more exposure you have to Travis, the more you start to fall for his charms. I think his father summed him up best:

You have to be patient with him. Travis doesn’t remember much about it, but he was close to his mom, and after we lost her he was never the same. I thought he’d grow out of it, you know, with him being so young. It was hard on all of us, but Trav… he quit trying to love people after that.

Travis doesn’t know what to do with his emotions, how to deal with what he feels or hot to express them. Because of that he continually fumbles and stumbles when it comes to Abby. He tries, poor thing…he does, but he tends to go a bit overboard. Whether it’s being overly demonstrative with his affection or over protective, he just can’t seemed to find the happy medium that would help ease Abby into the relationship with him. Lucky for us, Travis eventually does understand his flaws and gets his act together.

Abby isn’t without her own set of issues. She’s hiding out at college hoping to get out from under the shadow of her father. So starting up anything with Travis, even a friendship, puts her directly back in the limelight. She doesn’t handle that well or her relationship with Travis. She publicly fights the assumptions that something more is going on with Travis, while she continues to spend all her time with her under the guise of friendship. I couldn’t figure out if Abby was really that naive and couldn’t tell how Travis felt for her or if she was just truly ignoring it because she didn’t want to be one of his “girls”. It take a long time for Abby to finally figure things out. It means letting go of the past and all the preconceived notions she has about what a relationship should be, but she gets there.

I enjoyed the book, angst and all. It brought back what it was like to be nineteen and having to deal with all those emotions and trying to have that first adult relationship. I can’t wait to read WALKING DISASTER, which is this same story but from Travis’ point of view.