Beautiful Disaster by Jamie Maguire: Review

Beautiful Disaster
By Jamie Maguire
Published May 26th 2011
Pick up your copy at B&N, Amazon, or your local indie today!
Synopsis borrowed from Goodreads:

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 America, 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 charming college co-ed. Intrigued by Abby’s resistance to his charms, 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’ apartment for the same amount of time. Either way, Travis has no idea that he has met his match.

Darkfallen's thoughts:

This book was simply amazing! Seriously probably the best story I've read this year, and I don't see that changing as the year goes on. It's beautiful, raw, passionate, and at times devastating. To say that this is a beautiful disaster...well there isn't much disaster at all to this...

Abby starts her freshman year of college at Eastern U desperately trying to start over. She needs to live a life that is the polar opposite of her past life with her dad Mick. So no more drinking, gambling, and definitely no more bad boys. So with a wardrobe full of preppy "good girl" clothes Abby tries start over in a place where no one knows her or her father. But it doesn't take long before she meets Travis, the campus bad boy, and she falls back into her old life.

The relationship between Addy and Travis is raw, chaotic, and at most times like a train wreck. You know it's not healthy but you just can't tear your eyes away from it. They both bring their own baggage and problems to the table and when they collide they are beyond a beautiful disaster, but it's perfect in it's faults. I couldn't get enough of these two and I know that this is a book that I will read over and over again. In fact this is one of those books that compels you to read it no matter what. Sleep? Who needs sleep when you have a book this good?

And don't even get me started on how swoon worthy Travis is. Covered in tatts, picking fights at ever turn, but yet super smart at the same time he just took my breathe away. A perfect balance between the dark sexy side of a bad boy and the softer side of a boy that cares about people he loves.


I do want to address one thing...

Before picking this up I read some bad reviews of this book. It made me a little leery at first. The most common complaint these reviewers had was that the book was too violent. That there was too much unnecessary fighting. Well I couldn't disagree more with those people. We know from the synopsis that Travis is part of an underground fighting ring, and this is an important and vital part to the story. That being said yes there are graphic fight scenes in this novel but they are necessary to plot and make you really see the battle that Abby has when it comes to letting Travis in. I never once felt the scenes where overly violent. They were realistic and raw.

Overall Travis and Abby were perfect together and I can't wait to get my hands on the next book in this series. And yes there were a few editing errors here and there. I few things that could be cleaned up, but never once did it take away from the story; has you can tell by my 5 star rating. Actually I would venture to say this is more of a 7 star book!

Lymi...