Review: Beautiful Disaster by Jamie McGuire

Beautiful Disaster by Jamie McGuire
Published: August 14th, 2012 (Simon & Schuster)
Pages: 418
Source: for review via Netgalley
Series: Beautiful, #1
Buy the book: Bookdepository
Rating: ★☆☆☆☆ ½


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.

Okay. So I don’t really know how to write this review. This book hadn’t really captured my interest because of the synopsis or anything, but the hype surrounding it made me curious. Even though it was compared to books I thoroughly disliked and/or books I wouldn’t poke with a stick, I decided to give it a try. It was like watching a train wreck. Disaster? Yes. Beautiful? Not so much.

Abby is the so-called good girl in this book, who tries to evade the flirting of Travis Maddox, Bad Boy Extraordinaire and Womanizer Deluxe. With a simple bet, Travis tricks Abby into moving in with him for a month, and the story unfolds.

Okay. So where do I start? Let’s start with the bad news. Abby is a bland main character. Of course, she doesn’t know that she’s pretty and of course she doesn’t know Travis has the hots for her, oblivious as she is. Travis is the typical womanizer; dangerous, hot, muscular, popular and of course incredibly charming. He’s never had a girlfriend, and doesn’t have any interest in getting one, until he meets Abby. They get into some kind of mating dance, denying they like each other for the first half of the book and obsessing about each other in the second half. That also means there is a lot of arguing, fighting, drinking and destroyed doors, which of course results into Abby thinking that’s sweet.

In my world, that’s called a dysfunctional relationship. And while Abby seems to realise that once or twice in the book, she doesn’t act on it, besides a half-hearted attempt to escape him by going back to the most obvious place known to man; the dorm room. This was the point that I was seriously considering throwing my Kindle across the room.

However, there were sparks in some of the dialogue, which was funny in odd places. I liked their bickering, until it turned into jealous rage and the whole thing started up again. Travis is obsessed with Abby, whom I’m pretty sure he considers his property, and it hurts to look at. He calls her Pidgeon or Pidge about fifty billion times in the book and no, I’m not over exaggerating. Which leads me to another problem I had with this book; the storyline and the characters were so predictable, so obvious that I was so damn annoyed with this book. It’s like this book really knew what got on my nerves and then just did exactly that.

The weird thing is, McGuire can write. I mean, seriously write. The book read quickly, and easily, and it pretty much had me hooked. Like I said, it was like watching a train wreck and not being able to look away, no matter how hard you try. Which is exactly what the problem was with Beautiful Disaster for me. It was terrible, and awful, but I read it faster than books that I actually enjoyed reading. It’s disturbing.

I’m terribly sorry for this rant. I really am. I don’t like talking about books like this, but I feel like I had to get it out of my system.. So to conclude this review; I won’t be reading the sequel, Walking Disaster. I’ll be running.