How much is too much to love?
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. Just when he thought he was invincible, Abby Abernathy brings him to his knees.
Every story has two sides. In Jamie McGuire's New York Times bestseller Beautiful Disaster Abby had her say. Now it's time to see the story through Travis's eyes.
My Review:
Rating: 3.5/5 stars.
Walking Disaster is the second book in the 'Beautiful' series which is from Travis' POV. We get to see all the events from the first book through Travis' eyes and some new content from when he isn't with Abby. I really liked that we got to see more of Travis with his family, mainly his brother Trenton, which I think the next book will be focused on (not sure yet). Certain scenes were skipped over in this book in a couple of sentences but I'd have liked to see Travis' thoughts etc on some of those. Like when Abby gets cornered by Ethan. I do enjoy Travis and Abby's story but I can't ignore the huge problems that I have with theses books.
Travis is possessive, controlling, angry, and overall very toxic. He picks fights with so many people for comments that most would just ignore. He tells Abby that she should change because he can't stand other boys looking at her in certain clothes. He describes her drinking as 'man sized gulps'. All the boys in this book describe having sex with girls as 'bagging' or getting 'bagged' which is really revolting. The comment that I really took offence to was when they were at a Halloween party and Travis describes another girl as looking like a 'transvestite whore' which is disgusting and I really wonder what the author was thinking when she wrote that in a YA romance.
The finally chapter is 11 years on and I enjoyed seeing what Abby and Travis were doing and they both seemed happy and to have grown a lot which doesn't excuse any of the toxic behaviour previously in the book but it was nice to see that bad habits had gone with age. I'm looking forward to reading the short novella 'Something Beautiful' which is about Travis' cousin, Shepley and Abby's best friend America who featured a lot in the first two books. They have a more healthy relationship so it will be nice to read about them as main characters.
Overall, this book is a very mixed bag for me. I found it really hard to review because of my conflicting emotions.