Beautiful Disaster - Review

Beautiful Disaster (Beautiful #1)

By: Jamie McGuire

Published: May 26, 2011

437 pages

Source: Christmas gift from my snl Sandy @ Somewhere Only We Know and bnl

(Goodreads / Amazon)

Summary:

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 REVIEW:
I'm so torn by how I feel overall about this book.  On one hand - I LOVED IT!  On the other hand - it's disturbing how dysfunctional and unhealthy of a relationship Travis and Abby (aka Pigeon) have.  If I had a friend or family member attempting a relationship with a guy such as this I would tell her to RUN.  Anyone completely and totally dependent upon another person for their every moment of happiness is a disaster waiting to happen - well duh on the title, huh?  But that's the real world....so in the fictional world, their constant fighting, and making up, and fighting again, and making up again, over and over, shampoo, rinse, repeat...works.

I was pulled in to the emotions of both characters.  I couldn't understand how if Abby was trying so hard to stay away from her past, why on earth she was willing to support Travis in the fighting, which also consists of gambling.  Not only is the fighting dangerous, but that's gotta be illegal on some level, and not productive towards his Criminal Justice degree.

One thing is for sure, they have crazy love for one another.  Whether you understand their strange relationship or not, they have a connection that they have never found with anyone else, (and Travis should know being the man whore of Eastern).  And I gotta say, when you find The One, that is EXACTLY how it is.  You just know.  You work through the kinks and you mess up a lot, but your love conquers over the problems you face.  From that perspective of the book, I wholeheartedly agree!

Meet Travis and understand why I love him - "He oozed sex and rebelliousness with his buzzed brown hair and tattooed forearms..."

Favorite Quotes:
"I'm not impressed with your tattoos or your boyish charm or your forced indifference..."

"I didn't know how most girls felt around him, but I'd seen how they behaved.  I was experiencing more of a disoriented, nauseated feeling than giggly infatuation..."

"It's hard to forget you're behind me when your thighs are squeezing the life out of me."

"You should know by now that it takes patience and a forgiving attitude to be friends with Travis.  He's his own universe."

"Abs?  What are you, a workout video?"

"You like Pigeon...it's a dove, an attractive girl, a winning card in poker, take your pick.  You're my Pigeon."

"Whatever was going on with him, he needed me near him, and I couldn't have objected even if I'd wanted to."

"I had died and woken up in High School Musical."

"...all I need is you.  You're all I think about.  You're all I dream about.  You're all I want."

"I don't care what you were, or what you're not anymore.  I just want you."

"I didn't know I was lost until you found me."

"I knew the second I met you that there was something about you I needed."

These last 2 quotes sum up very well Travis and Abby's relationship: 

"Fighting, laughing, loving, or crying...I was where I wanted to be."

"...crazy is exactly the way I like it..."

Check out these two crazy people who will get under your skin with their incessant fighting, and then have you gushing over their amazing conquering love.
4 stars

And for your listening pleasure, here is a song I heard on Pandora while reading this book.  "It's gotta be you, only you....can we try one more time, baby just give me one more time..."

Gotta Be You by One Direction