 |
|
Author: Jamie McGuire
My Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
Purchase: Amazon | B&N | TBD
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.
“Maybe it was just me. Maybe it was just me and her. Maybe together we were this volatile entity that would either implode or meld together.”
When I first knew about this being the same story but on Travis’s POV, I was already disappointed. I would love to read more about their married life and that’s what I expected all along. When I started reading it, I wished their story was written in Travis’s POV. Obviously, there were difficulties such as having plot holes. Sure, I managed to remember something from Beautiful Disaster but not all of them. I wish it at least explained some things instead of just narrating it, like some missing conversations and why Travis is fighting. I realized that at 6%, the author thought or expected that we’d remember everything from Abby’s POV. But one of the pros of having these plot holes is not reading
When I first read about him in Beautiful Disaster, I was already shaking my head and asking myself how stupid can he be. But introducing Travis to the readers through Abby’s POV didn’t give him any justice. Reading it through Travis was both painful and so much better. Painful in a way that it takes serious effort not to bash his head because of the way acts especially with how he objectifies women. But everything helps you understand more of his attitude. Yes, he’s still that jerk we knew but everything had a reason. He shows a vulnerable side through his insecurities and possessiveness. He’s afraid to let love someone only to lose them. He’s been using his bad boy attitude to protect himself from being hurt but Abby was the lucky one to break it.
I love seeing more of Travis’s family in the first chapter no matter how heartbreaking it was. It gave me a reason for the way he acts and the way he sees life. And the last chapter was just heartwarming. After everything they went through—after everything he went through—it was great to see that he finally had his happy ending.
I think most people who’d read this would also prefer reading their story on Travis’s POV. There was rawness and honesty in it that made this dysfunctional relationship a bit bearable. But there will always be those who will be disappointed due to the missing parts that made you wish you either have an enormous memory or you re-read Beautiful Disaster before reading this. I still wish this was a continuation of the first book, on Travis’s POV not a redo of everything.
This copy was provided by the publisher through Netgalley in exchange of an honest review.
