Beautiful Disaster – A Book Review

Beautiful Disaster by Jamie McGuire

4 daisies out of 5

A few weeks ago Simon & Schuster Canada contacted me to see if they could send me a copy of a new novel they described as ’50 Shades meets Twilight’. Well clearly if you know me at all you know I jumped all over that opportunity, but when Beautiful Disaster arrived and I started reading, I really didn’t see any similarities to ‘50 Shades’ nor to ‘Twilight‘. In fact I think that they might be doing this book a disservice by trying to market it as such, because Beautiful Disaster is a great book that while may appeal to the same audiences that 50 Shades and Twilight does, that’s kind of where the similarities end.

I returned home from my family vacation late last week find Beautiful Disaster waiting for me in my mailbox and even though I was exhausted that night I decided to start reading. I ended up reading over 230 pages until well past 2 am because I just couldn’t put the story down. I finished the book the next day, ignoring my kids while I camped out on my couch completely consumed by the story.  I love a book that I can’t put down!

Beautiful Disaster tells the story of Abby Abernathy – an 18 year old college student who meets her campus’s resident badboy/womanizer Travis Maddox when her best friend America brings her to an underground fighting ring where Travis is the main attraction. Travis is instantly attracted to Abby and does everything he can to spend time with her, while Abby does everything in her power to keep Travis at a distance, with no intentions of being another notch on his bedpost. At its surface this is a very basic ‘boy meets girl/ girl plays hard to get out of fear of getting hurt‘ story.  Author Jamie McGuire is so talented at depicting both these characters pros and cons that you find yourself completely engulfed in the story and changing your mind about what you want to happen as much as the characters do.

Without giving you any spoilers, because it really is a great book and I don’t want to give any of the plot points away, Beautiful Disaster is just the kind of book that you can’t put down. I guess for me it was similar in that way to 50 Shades and Twilight where I found myself very much invested in the main characters that I couldn’t wait to see how their relationship would develop. But trust me that is where the similarities end (definitely no red room of pain in this book:) ) I’ve read a lot of books this summer and there’s even a few that I’m still struggling to get through, but Beautiful Disaster was definitely one of those books worth the investment of my time. I have a feeling that once you’ve read it you’ll pass it along to your girlfriends so they can read it too.

It’s hard for me to tell you why I loved the book so much. I didn’t particularly love either of the main characters all the time and I definitely had moments where I actually disliked them. But both were written so well that even though I loved them and hated them and struggled with the decisions they made throughout the novel I found myself invested in the decisions they did make and couldn’t wait to see what was going to happen next. I loved the supporting characters more, with both Abby’s best friend America and her boyfriend Shepley, who was also Travis’s cousin being some of the most well developed supporting characters I’ve seen in a long time.

Beautiful Disaster is the perfect end of summer read – a book that you’ll devour in a days because you’ll be unable to put it down. I also checked out author Jamie McGuire’s website and discovered that she’s working on a new book titled Walking Disaster which tells the same story but from Travis’s point of view. Can’t wait to read that too!

Beautiful Disaster is available from Simon and Schuster Canada today, August 14th. If you pick it up please let me know what you think.