Beautiful Disaster - Jamie McGuire

The new 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.

Oh Beautiful Disaster, how I love thee...let me count the ways...Travis, Travis, and more Travis!!!

I know this book has gotten some criticism regarding the amount of violence, but to be completely honest - I don't really care.  Jamie McGuire took us on a ride of story that I loved so much I have read this book four separate times.  It was another story when I got to the end I was so disappointed I started reading it over.  I couldn't stop talking about it, to the point where my husband pretty much new the entire story as I told him every detail and then I read it again. 

So they were a little crazy...everyone is a little crazy! It's just the amount of crazy one person is willing to put up with.  Abby and Travis each brought a good amount of crazy to the table so they both needed to be willing to put up with a good amount of crazy in return.

This book had moments that were heart breaking, and then some where you were literally smiling because things were happening the way you wanted them to.  Sometimes I was angry at Abby, sometimes I was angry at Travis - but to me, that just means Jamie McGuire wrote these characters well enough that I actually cared about how they treated each other. 

Jamie is currently re-writing the book from Travis' point of view and I for one can't wait to read it in 2013.  There was also a mention of getting books about Travis' brothers which I am hoping we get to see also.  I'm looking forward to Travis and Abby appearances in those books too! :)

I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in a good read that can handle a little bit of violence. See below for the review I posted to Amazon:

I read this book after reading the Fifty Shades Trilogy twice, and I wanted to move on to something new. The same friend that recommended those books suggested this one and I fell for it hook, line and sinker.

That isn't to say this book is like the Fifty Shades books at all. It's a different setting, different age group, different type of story line but I LOVED Travis and Abby. I found myself not able to put this book down, read it in one day.

People complained about the violence and the co-dependency of these characters but I can't say I was one of those people. If I had been friends with someone like Abby dating a Travis in college, perhaps I would feel differently? But even then, this was a story about two fictional characters, and any characters that got involved in the violence were also not real. I would say it's all in how you choose to read something. Some people read the Fifty Shades books and only saw Sex, some of us read a love story. Some people will read this and only see violence or an "unhealthy" relationship - again, some of us read a love story.

As a side note, my pet peeve in reading reviews (not just of this book) is when people claim the story is unrealistic. Well, duh! It's fiction. We are the same little girls that watched Cinderella and The Little Mermaid. We are champions of Kermit and Miss Piggy (really, a Frog and a Pig). We wait for the happy ending before the credits role. We wanted Baby and Johnny to live happily ever after, how old was her character again in that movie? We don't want realism...or at least I can be honest enough to say, I don't.

I did find some errors in the book that suggested to me the need for a proofreader, but all in all I loved the story line and the characters (the supporting characters of America and Shepley almost as much as Travis & Pigeon/Abby).

I was so sad for it to be over, that I returned right to the beginning and started it again. Even then I wasn't finished and I'm still left wanting more!