Author: Jamie McGuire
Publisher: Atria Books
Publication Date: April 2, 2013
Genre: New Adult Romance
Format: Kindle 1372 KB | Paperback 448 pages
Buy this book on Amazon: Paperback |
Kindle Edition
Author's Website: http://www.jamiemcguire.com/
Author's Goodreads Profile: Jamie McGuire
Synopsis from Goodreads:
Finally, the highly anticipated follow-up to the New York Times bestseller Beautiful Disaster. Can you love someone too much? Travis Maddox learned two things from his mother before she died: Love hard. Fight harder.
In Walking Disaster, the life of Travis is full of fast women, underground gambling, and violence. But just when he thinks he is invincible, Abby Abernathy brings him to his knees.
Every story has two sides. In Beautiful Disaster, Abby had her say. Now it’s time to see the story through Travis’s eyes.
I was so excited to get approved for an ARC print copy of this book, even though it meant that I had to sit on my review until today! It's been a few weeks since I have read this book at this point and I have trying to stay away from all the reviews so that they don't color my view of the book, but it's SO hard to do. I also went back to read my own review of Beautiful Disaster and really my review of this book is so very similar. Here is a snippet of my review where I point out the main problems I had with the story
I do have to point out that I did not care for the nickname he gave her, I didn't find it endearing, it was just a little weird for me! I think that for the most part the characters were pretty strong and by the end I really did come to care for them. Once I got past my Abby annoyance, I started to like her. I just wanted her to wise up sooner than she did!
The only thing that really bothers me about the story is that Travis didn't seen to grow much. I mean, he did settle down and quit being a player, but he had some pretty significant anger issues that were never really resolved. Honestly, that's why I could see a sequel. I felt like he needed to evolve a little more as a character. I don't know if that makes any sense! I didn't feel like his story got proper closure, I guess.
I only gave Beautiful Disaster 4 stars on Goodreads, mostly for these things. I felt like Travis was just as volatile and angry at the end and I felt like he needed to grow more as a character. So, now in this book we get the story from Travis and I have to say that I enjoyed it much more from him. I still loved him, probably more in this book. I think that seeing all this play out from his side was nice. I actually disliked Abby so much more in this book. In the other book I started to like her, in this one I didn't. I felt like she was more self-centered and annoying from his POV and honestly I am not sure why he wanted her so much!
I loved that we found out why he called her Pigeon and I loved the Maddox "boys" so much in this book. Probably even more for knowing what they went through with their mother. For me the icing on the cake was the Epilogue. I know that there are those out there that will say that it's not fitting to the story, but I think it was perfect. I felt like this was the part that was missing from the original book and that's why I gave this one 5 stars on Goodreads.
I know that there is a trend that seems to be starting where a book gets "re-told" by the other character and I can't say that I like this trend. I think that in some cases it's a way to sell more books without having to write another original story. In this case, however, I feel like there was a story that needed to be told and I think that Ms. MsGuire did Travis justice with his side of the story. I don't think it's necessarily fair to call this book a sequel though, it's not a 2nd part to their story, it's just the 1st story retold from another POV. I think that this is where it's really helpful for the original story to be told from a more omniscient POV instead of the 1st person that most authors are going with these days.
I love that this followed right along with the original book, there are no additions we just see everything from Travis' side. If you haven't read Beautiful Disaster then I recommend doing so before picking this one up, otherwise there are places that you will be lost. I think that I still liked this one more.
*Disclaimer: I was provided with a copy of this book courtesy of the publisher in exchange for my honest review.*
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