Thursday, May 2, 2013

Dual Review: Walking Disaster by Jamie McGuire

Walking Disaster 
(Beautiful, #2)
Jamie McGuire
April 2, 2013
Atria Books
433 pages

Synopsis:
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.


Reviews
Beauitful Disaster not only was one of my favorite books that I read last year, but it's definitely one of my favorite romance novels of all time. When I heard Jamie McGuire was retelling it from Travis' POV, I had a rare fangirl moment and counted down the days until its release - buying it at midnight of the big day so I could start reading ASAP. I imagined staying up all night reading until the wee hours of the morning. Well, I did start at midnight, read about 30 pages and then.....was bored. I was shocked! I mean, I read Beautiful Disaster in a day and then again at least 5 (ok, it might be closer to 10) times, and I think I loved it more every time! And Travis is my favorite part of BD, and Walking Disaster is just BD with more Travis, so how on Earth did Walking Disaster go wrong for me?? I've thought about this for a while now, and this is what I've concluded - Ms. McGuire did such an amazing job bringing Travis to life the first time around, that even though we couldn't read his mind exactly, we still knew what he was thinking. Reading BD, he was real. All his emotions, all his longing, all his heartbreak. So, there was nothing new here. At least not for me. Did I love Travis and Abby just as much from this perspective? Absolutely. Was the story still amazing as a stand alone? Definitely. I just never felt as immersed in the story and nothing compelled me to keep reading. It actually took me 3 weeks to finish it because I kept picking up other books in between reading it.

If I read this book without having read Beautiful Disaster first, I'd probably give it 4/5 stars, but as that wasn't the case:

Walking Disaster: 3/5 Stars. 
Cover: 5/5 Stars




I totally agree with my co-blogger on this. I adored Beautiful Disaster, made everyone in my office read it, anoyone that asked for a great read I said, Beautiful Disaster. Travis Maddox had me swooning like a teenager. I counted down the days until Walking Disaster and was very excited to read it. When I started it I had such anticiaption to see the world from Travis's eyes and some of my favorite scenes from Beautiful Disaster did not even make it into this re-telling, like when he first sets eyes on Abby at the fight. I don't know what it is exactly, whether it be I had such high hopes for this story, if I just can't connect from a male POV or if since I already knew the story I wasn't as engrossed or anxious  to see how it ended. I will say that I loved the fact that we got an epiloge and got to see a glimpse into their future, that was my favorite part. I enjoyed this book but Beautiful Disaster is still my hands down favorite.


Walking Disaster:         3.5/5 stars                                                      
               Cover:        5/5 stars                                                        
                                           
                                                            ~~~~~~Tanya~~~~~~                                                    

3 comments:

  1. I loved Beautiful Disaster and I was so excited when I heard about this book, but i'm still a bit wary about reading it because I might end up not liking Travis anymore, or I might get bored. Thanks for the insight!

    - Ellie at The Selkie Reads Stories

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  2. THANK YOU! I thought I was the only one that had a WTF moment with this one. I too have read BD countless times and yet this one seemed more like a fanfic than a companion novel.

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  3. Maybe she didn't do as good of a job as she thought she did at getting inside the male mind.

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