If you think having your heart broken over a fictitious novel is outrageous, then having your heart broken over the same fictitious novel written from two different perspectives is downright bizarre. With Walking Disaster, the sequel to Beautiful Disaster also written by Jamie McGuire, it’s true. It’s damn true.
RELATED LINKS: Beautiful Disaster review on SolSat
In Walking Disaster, the reader takes the perspective of Travis Maddox, the badboy hearthrob from Beautiful Disaster. The novel travels through the events written in Beautiful, except from Travis’ perspective, making the story more interesting and intriguing as a whole.
The world of Travis and Abby was much more clear in Walking, not just because you saw the second half of the story but just because Travis as a character had a much more clear head than Abby and knew what he wanted from the beginning. It is because of this clarity that I was glued to this book. It tied up all the loose ends created in Beautiful and did it in such a succinct manner that Jamie McGuire needs to be given some sort of medal for it. Seeing all the “skipped scenes” in Beautiful being written in Walking was very fulfilling to those like myself who were thirsty for some more of Travis and Abby shenanigans.
In regards to Travis knowing what he wanted from the beginning – that being Abby – the relationship between the two protagonists was much more beautiful from Travis’ opinion. While Abby was in denial about her feelings for Travis in Beautiful, Travis knew he was head over heels for the fiesty girl from the get go and it was so beautiful seeing this troubled heartbreaker go through such a dramatic change. I empathised with this book so well that I had my heart broken again – in the same parts as last time – even though I was reading as Travis.
Walking Disaster was written in the same manner as Beautiful Disaster but the way the words fell onto the page clearly illustrated the difference in minds between Abby and Travis which, ta da, made this book so great! The language used was grabbing and sophisticated and made the book all the more enjoyable to read. McGuire captured the mind of a young male very well and I have to say that I thought the inner workings of Travis’ mind was much more entertaining than Abby’s.
The storyline was the same as Beautiful Disaster, obviously, but even saying that I still found it interesting just because I was going through the other half of the story, especially with the little tidbits not touched upon in Beautiful. Travis and Abby’s love story is addictive and as dangerously obsessive as they the characters find it. Seeing what was going through Travis’ mind when he made some of his (foolish) decisions made me empathise with him and not mentally throw a shoe at him for bringing home two girls from the Red.
Solst-o-meter
Storyline: 8.6/10
Style of writing: 8.2/10
Overall: 8.4/10
I’m hooked on Travis and Abby and I can’t get over it. I even have a couple of songs on my playlist that remind me of their relationship and I get emotional when I listen to them just because I think of their love story. Walking Disaster is just as great as Beautiful Disaster, if not, greater. I’m hanging out for some kind of third book in the series to fill this void in my life but if that doesn’t happen, I’ll happily go back and read through Beautiful and Walking again – and let Travis break my heart another two times.
Absolutely excellent read and I recommend this to everyone, no matter what your preference in read is!
– by The Black Widow
Pingback: The Bachelors of the Books | Solstice Satisfaction