Review: Walking Disaster by Jamie McGuire

Goodreads Summary:

Finally, the highly anticipated follow-up to the New York Times bestseller Beautiful Disaster. 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.

Publication Date: April 2, 2013

Wow, that was one crazy trip! I understand now why people get so worked up one way or another over these characters from the Beautiful Disaster series. Reading Travis and Abby’s story was addictive and I literally couldn’t put the book down.

As a little background, I never finished reading Beautiful Disaster. I had downloaded it ages ago when it came out with that awful cover featuring an open mouth with some weird crap on the tongue. I didn’t really like the characters so didn’t get past the first few chapters. Here's a refresher in case you never saw the old cover:

For Walking Disaster, I still couldn’t stand the characters. Those people were awful! There was so much misogyny from both the men and the women, a lot of it was hard to stomach. At the beginning of the book, Travis was seriously such a douche bag. I felt myself growing violent every time he called a girl a slut or a ho. The girls were just as bad! Some people sleep around in college, it doesn’t make them deserving of being called a STD riddled whore. But just because their actions weren’t right, it doesn’t mean that this kind of behavior doesn’t happen.

Once Travis and Abby get together, Travis had flashes of likability. But his violent and controlling side kept me from being completely Team Travis. Yet, I could see how he was getting frustrated with Abby, she kept sending mixed signals and was so wishy-washy. Honestly, the only character I really liked was Shep, who seemed like the voice of reason that everyone told to shut up all the time.  

However, I must admit, it’s still a good story and a lot of it is very realistic. People do have crazy and destructive relationships. I knew several couples that had intense relationships where half of the time they had crazy fights and broke up and the other half they were deliriously happy and wanted to get married.

I’m kind of torn on whether I should’ve read BD first. In one sense, I feel like WD may have been less exciting to read since I would’ve already known the story. On the other hand, a lot of things that must have happened in the first book were glossed over in WD. Like Travis mentions how Abby is almost hurt at one of his fights, but it’s never fully explained what happened. There’s also not a lot of character development, so I found myself a little confused over who was who.

It was definitely interesting being inside of Travis’s head! I think fans of the series are really going to enjoy his take on his relationship with Abby. I see what all of the fuss is about, I finished the book days ago and I still can’t stop thinking about the characters.

Rating: 4/5 Stars

Thanks to the publisher for a copy of this book for review!