Beautiful Disaster

By: Jamie McGuire

Narrated by: Emma Galvin

Length: 10 hrs and 30 mins

Publisher's summary

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 needs—and wants—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.

©2011 Jamie McGuire (P)2012 Simon & Schuster

Critic reviews

" Beautiful Disaster is insanely addictive. Beautifully sexy, beautifully intense, and beautifully perfect. Jamie McGuire has written a damn good book." (Jessica Park, author of the New York Times best seller Flat-Out Love)

Loved it!

I loved it!! It was an audiobook I couldn’t stop listening to until the end. Fantastic plot and mostly similar to the movie, which has a phenomenal cast. Now I’m going to read Jamie’s next novel “Walking Disaster.”

the ending

I love all of it because it's one of best book I have read

Amazing and Emotional with Blood!

What a freakin amazing story! Travis freakin Maddox! What!

Ok. Now that is over... I totally think Travis character made this book. I have never seen the bad boy done this way. The bad boy is either completely bad or secretly bad, not a popular, campus hot boy jock, but an inner demon sadistic crazy fighting streak. Travis is such a hidden emotional character but you don't actually realize this until later on in the story, and when you do, it's like WHAM! McGuire really did an awesome job in developing Travis Maddox.

Pige... or Pigeon or Abby is running away from an ex-famous gambling daddy and it that ruff life and starting over in college and meets Travis. One thing leads to another and they become friends but as you know, this is a love story... they fall in love. They are totally wrong for each other but totally right for each other. They bring their best friends along for their tor relationship. It’s just soo emotionally. I think I actually got teary there a bit...

This was my first time listening to Emma. She kinda reminded me of Madeline Maby a bit with her whimsical style of reading the female characters. That I don't give a crap, independent attitude she brings to female characters is really good and is something Maby is known for, and Emma had that in this book with Pigeon and America ( Pige’s best friend).

This book was a total buy on a whim, but so glad I did. I am totally on a romantic novel kick right now. I would buy and credit this.

Intense and Over the Top

Beautiful Disaster is intense and over the top but it’s certainly a gripping story.

In Beautiful Disaster, Abby and her BFF America go to college together at Eastern University. Abby is trying to escape from her dark past and start a new life, and America fully supports her. Abby doesn’t want any drama, and works toward being a model student. When she attends the local fight club with America and her boyfriend Shepley, she meets Shepley’s cousin, Travis “Mad Dog” Maddox, fight club champion, and just the kind of trouble she wanted to avoid.

Travis has a reputation as a lady-killer, and is a tattooed, smoking, drinking, motorcycle riding badass with a volatile personality. And, he’s set his sights on Abby. He’s exactly what Abby doesn’t want in her life right now. But, he’s relentlessly persistent, and she decides to give friendship a try. When Abby loses to Travis in a bet, she has to live with him for 30 days, which fast tracks their relationship.

A lot of the book is about the dysfunctional, crazy relationship between Abby and Travis. He is obsessive, jealous, and possessive and Abby alternately loves it or runs away from it. Part of the mystery is her past, and once we understand where she’s coming from, her reluctant attraction to Travis makes sense. Though if this were real life, I think her friends would say, “Run away, Abby!” because their relationship is very unhealthy. I was strangely fascinated by the back and forth relationship though, and absorbed with each dark turn. I wasn’t crazy about Travis’s nickname for Abby though – he calls her pigeon constantly.

The secondary characters America and Shepley help to keep the story grounded. Both are very good friends to the couple. And Travis’ dad and brothers also entertain. The tumultuous twosome even get a dog, Toto, who I found myself worrying about due to Travis and Abby’s frequent absences.

Audiobook narrator extraordinaire Emma Galvin reads the audiobook. I swear she’s a chameleon, and can transform her voice to suit any character. She brings sass and personality to the characters, and delivers a spot-on reading for the Travis and Abby characters. Galvin reads with intensity that ramps up the drama of the story. Though the story is crazy at times, I was addicted to the audiobook.

I can’t say this book will be for everyone, and the mature content may offend some readers. But if you like edgier, new adult, or contemporary romance, I think it’s worth a read.

Should be “YA”

Overall this book was... sweet, kinda, but really immature. This should be in the Young Adult section. I tried to finish it but i honestly couldn’t because it was just way too much. Not realistic - i know books are an escape but this was just... a lot. I’m a lover of romance and i liked some pieces and points to it, but it just got overplayed very quickly.

This guy is OBSESSED with the main character and it’s cute at first but then it consumes him and becomes his whole identity - which is really incredibly high-school like some reviews below say. His obsession is down-right annoying.

The performance was alright - i gave 4 stars because she changed her voice for the male characters and it wasn’t forced or weird. She has a really raspy voice, so I’d keep that in mind if you’re fickle with voices.

The story was again, alright, nothing of real substance everything is really odd and “out there” even for a non-fiction book. I didn’t finish and ended up returning it.

Not bad, not great

When I purchased the audible I was hoping for a complex story and characters, and what I got was petty teenagers. I listened to the very end and I was upset to the outcome of this absurd male persona.

Very disappointed.

What a roller coaster!

What did you love best about Beautiful Disaster?

Watching Travis Maddox evolve.

What was one of the most memorable moments of Beautiful Disaster?

The whole fire scene.

Have you listened to any of Emma Galvin’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

No, this was my first audiobook.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

When Abby tells Travis to go home and he said "you are my home." Ugh! Just rip my heart out!

Audible Review

This is one of my all time favorite books. I absolutely love it. Read three times and finally decided to give audible a try. Sadly the narrator just didn't do it for. The story was still amazing but this particular narrator just didn't go well with the characters and at times I had a hard time distinguishing which character was talking because they all sounded the same.

Great Story...but meant for teenagers

What made the experience of listening to Beautiful Disaster the most enjoyable?

I do enjoy a good love story. However, this is a story that was too young for me to enjoy. The story was great, but the roller coaster of emotions this book took me back was the high school days. If you enjoy young crazy love with a ton of "what if" and "I should haves" this book is for you.

Great Book!

I loved this story! The author really makes you feel the way the characters are feeling. I wanted it to keep going and was bummed when it ended. I was happy to find out that Walking Disaster tells the story from the boy's point of view and loved that book too.