Beautiful Disaster by Jamie McGuire

Eye of the Beholder
For a title that's only available on e-readers this is one awesome cover. Certainly eye catching and pretty apt considering the amount of alcohol that's consumed in this book, I know I've had few morning afters where I truly believed Hell had set up shop on my tongue!

Take On Me
Abby Abernathy has a few rules she needs to stick to if she’s going to get through her college years at Eastern without her past catching up with her. Study hard, be good and above all stay away, far away, from the bad boys. A promise she finds difficult to keep after experiencing her first underground college fight and runs headfirst into the infamous Travis ‘Mad Dog’ Maddox. Shaved head, tattoos and famously free with his affections for the females, Travis is everything Abby needs to avoid lest her shady Vegas past drags her down again. But with her best friend from home, America (seriously that is her name) dating Travis’ cousin and roommate Shepley, he proves impossible to ignore. And when Abby foolishly accepts and loses Travis’ wager, she finds herself the roommate of Eastern’s most notorious bad boy for a whole month.


Mad About The Boy

I have no idea what possessed me to pick this little morsel up, I’m not usually a straight down the line romance kind of girl (although I do enjoy the odd smutty scene!). But it was a decent price, it was an ebook (so no waiting for the post) and it seems to be getting some high praise from the Amazonians so I thought what the hell. Man am I glad I read this book!


Firstly I totally loved Abby, she was self sufficient, practical but not above letting herself go with a bit of bad behaviour. Basically she was tonnes of fun and I wished she was real so her and I could totally go dancing together. She was pretty clueless at times as well (especially when it came to Travis) but never in that severely frustrating way where you swear the main character must be blind and stupid, I completely got that her reluctance to admit her own feelings was forcing her to ignore Travis’.


And Travis Maddox! What an awesome name for an incredible character. Travis is not your usual run of the mill bad boy turned good for the woman he loves (thank god cos those guys are boring) He’s already a pretty decent guy when they first meet, none of that smouldering sneery faced ‘treat ‘em mean’ malarkey. OK so he is a complete man whore and he is certainly less then civil to all of his conquests but once Abby has established that the two of them are only going to be friends, he only ever treats her with respect and, quite frankly, becomes adorably protective of her. Although he definitely takes ‘protective’ to a whole new level.

"Adam threw a scarlet square of fabric on Marek's limp body, and the mob detonated. Cash changed hands once again, and the expressions divided into the smug and the frustrated.
I was pushed around with the movement of those coming and going. America called my name from somewhere in the back, but I was mesmerized by the trail of red from my chest to my waist.

A pair of heavy black boots stepped in front of me, diverting my attention to the floor. My eyes traveled upward; jeans spattered with blood, a set of finely-chiseled abs, a bare tattooed chest drenched in sweat, and finally a pair of warm, brown eyes. I was shoved from behind, and Travis caught me by the arm before I fell forward.

"Hey! Back up off her!" Travis frowned, shoving anyone who came near me. His stern expression melted into a smile at the sight of my shirt, and then he dabbed my face with a towel. "Sorry about that Pigeon."
Adam patted the back of Travis' head. "C'mon, Mad Dog! You have some dough waitin' on ya!"

His eyes didn't stray from mine. "It's a damn shame about the sweater. It looks good on you" In the next moment he was engulfed by fans, disappearing the way he came. 

"What were you thinking you idiot?" America yelled, yanking my arm.
"I came here to see a fight, didn't I?" I smiled."

In a book that has bare knuckle fighting, indiscriminate sex and drunken shenanigans it’s a given that Abby and Travis’ relationship was hardly going to be all flowers, cookies and gushy feelings. Nope, they were way more interesting to read about, these two are constantly at odds and at times it’s became hearth wrenchingly sad to see them dig into each other. They sort of become that couple, the one you remember from school or University who were nothing but drama, everything was either amazing or downright awful and everybody had to witness their daily shout fests. Weirdly even though I found those couples insufferable in real life, they don’t half make for fascinating reading! Plus the adorable additions of America and Shepley help to ground the two, they were great secondary characters and never shied from calling out either Travis or Abby when they got a little dramatic.

In the beginning Beautiful Disaster is really just that familiar romance story in which the sneaky machinations of the hero are all in order to get the heroine to fall for him (or at least to not hate his guts). But this story goes way past that initial happy ending and shows you how hard it is to keep that perfect forever after, how’s it’s not just down to great sex or even love, it needs honesty and the acceptance that some things need to be let go. This epiphany didn’t even occur to me until a day after I finished the book! Up till then it was just a great fun story, but it has stuck with me and I’m so glad I took a chance on reading it.