Review - Beautiful Disaster - By: Jamie McGuire

Title: Beautiful Disaster
Author: Jamie McGuire
Publisher: Jamie McGuire
Release Date: May 26th, 2011
Series: Beautiful #1
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Synopsis via Goodreads

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.

My rating:

Just so you know, this review is really 

long and kind of rant-y so read at your own risk.

I went into Beautiful Disaster thinking I was going to either hate it or love it. Looking at its many reviews, everyone seemed to rate it either 5 stars or 1 star (since zero wasn't an option). That said, from chapter one I was already rolling my eyes and snorting to myself when I thought: "You know what? I'll actually give it a try." So I cleared all of the my initial thoughts and got into the story. Now, let me start by saying that I didn't hate the book...I hated the relationship between the main characters, as well as some most of the decisions they made.

So, we have Abby & Travis aka the Wanna-Be-Good-Girl and the Incredible Hulk sans green skin. Oh, wait. Green stands for jealousy, right? Leave the green skin then, since Abby couldn't have sneezed in another guy's direction without Travis huffing and puffing and threatening to break someone's face.

If you haven't noticed by now, I HATE it when jealousy consumes a relationship. Hate it, I think there's no reason for you to feel like you need to beat anyone down for glancing at your partner. Yeah, we're all human, but guess what? There's this thing called self-control. Maybe they were glancing (and I'm talking to you, Travis) because it's freaking college and Abby's a decent looking girl. You ever think of that? Gawd, I spent the later half of the book wanting to throw my iPod (it was an audiobook) across the room because hey, I'm an impressionable teenager and since it's okay for Travis to wreck nice things, why can't I?

*takes deep breath* But I can't blame this ALL on Travis. It's Abby, too. Abby, as an individual, is pretty damn decent. She's in college, trying to forget her past, carve out a new life for herself and all that jazz. In the beginning, when she meets Travis after his fight, she resists him.

And, let me just say, I liked Travis in the beginning too. Tattoos, nice muscles, and he seemed to have a friendly, charming personality before he turned into a raging psychopath. But back to Abby...I thought she was a complete, unnecessary bitch after her meeting with Travis. She judged him immediately without knowing him as a person. That frustrated me relentlessly & was her first strike for me.

So after getting to know him a bit, they decide to be "friends". And why is friends in quotes, you ask? Because it was a bullshit excuse. Well into the book, when they were getting drunk and dirty dancing and cuddling in the same damn bed, Abby was still crying "we're still friends!" Really? Fucking REALLY? It got worse because after they've SLEPT TOGETHER, she had the gall to still date a different guy and spout the same bullshit line. WE'RE JUST FRIENDS. Were you, Abby? Because I can honestly say I've never done any of those things with any of my friends. The whole time I was just like open your fucking eyes.

That was the only point where I felt Travis's anger was well-deserved. At that point, he'd fallen in love with her and taken her signals as any guy would do only to have her date some other guy, all while telling them both "we're just friends." Shit, I'd probably lose my marbles too if some guy I loved was giving me the run-around (mind the phrase) like that. That was Abby's second strike.

The third and final strike was when she and Travis and her friends America and Shepley (Travis's cousin) go out, and two guys hit on Abby at separate occasions, yet on the same night. Travis goes ballistic, trying to pummel the guys each time, and on the second occurrence, hits the guy and ALMOST HITS ABBY!!!

Oh, hell no! Oh, HELL NO! I actually had to put my iPod down and think about this one. He almost PUNCHED HIS GIRLFRIEND IN THE FUCKING FACE. And all because he couldn't control himself. It was here where I was like "NO, Abby, you need to escape this relationship NOW!" I mean, there'd been SO MANY warning signs leading up to it. Travis telling her she made him psycho/crazy, telling her he'd never let her go, telling her that if she slept with someone else he'd go to jail. But HELL NO. This scene put things into perspective for me. Abby reacted accordingly, I give her props for that. She went off, saying she wouldn't be the first girl he ever hit. And for a moment, I thought their relationship was over. But nope! Eventually, what was an unforgivable almost-punch WAS forgivable after all by Abby's standards.

For that, I'd forsaken both Abby and Travis, leaving them to their not-so-beautiful-actually-abusive-are-you-stupid-oh-wait-of-course-you-are disaster of a relationship. (Yet somehow I still forced myself to read/listen to the whole thing.)

This review is already too long, so I'm just going to wrap it up with a few points. First, I give it three stars because, although the relationship disgusted me, the writing was great and easy to follow. The plot was gritty and realistic, as well as filled with captivating drama. It took me through emotional highs and lows, even though disbelief and anger and incredulity ruled over me as I read/listened.

Second, I actually LIKED the heroine as the story progressed, so her involvement with Travis made me more dissapointed than anything. Abby was likeable enough once I got over her initial judgmental tendencies. She seemed smart and straight-forward with a good head on her shoulders. She recognized her relationship with Travis for the obsession that it was. Except, she crossed out all of her good characteristics by choosing to be with him anyway.

And third, there was nothing "beautiful" about their relationship, its utterly misleading and promotes the idea that its OKAY to be treated this way by your overly aggressive, controlling but OMG-he-has-tattoos-and-is-so-irresistably-HAWT-I-KNOW-I-can-change-him boyfriend. (And that wasn't entirely Abby's P.O.V. after they fell in love, but that's still what I got out of it.) It's not okay.

All right. I'm done. I'm exhausted. And I hope I never have to go through that again because I've never wished for a relationship to end as much as I did with those two dysfunctional people.