Monday 22 April 2013

Review: "Walking Disaster" by Jamie McGuire Win a paperback copy of the book too


I first fell in love with Travis “Mad Dog” Maddox last year when I read “Beautiful Disaster”. I had just taken up reading and was after some really good adult contemporary romances. What I didn’t expect to find was a whole host of very hot male characters that would end up being my fictional book boyfriends. Well... Travis Maddox was my first, yup he popped my book boyfriend cherry. So you can imagine my delight when I found out that I would be getting another dose of him. Yes Jamie McGuire decided to write “Beautiful Disaster” from Travis’s point of view and aptly named it “Walking Disaster”. Although the story remains the same, because we see it through his eyes, we do get more... a lot more (ahem!!!)

So I  finished reading the book last night and just needed a little time to compose myself before writing this review. God I was all over the place. I loved this book, absolutely loved it... it was freakin’ amazing. Walking Disaster had me feeling all sorts of emotions as I followed Travis and Abby through their journey but I finished it as I had started it...by crying. Yes both the prologue and the epilogue had me in tears. Sad tears for the start and tears of complete and utter happiness as their story concluded.
So what's the book about? Travis Maddox wasn’t the type to fall in love, he was a “one night only” kind of guy. He was drop dead gorgeous. He was tattooed. He was a fighter. He was 100% bad ass and I fell in love all over again. Travis Maddox well and truly  had my head in a spin. He had me in stitches one minute and was breaking my heart the next but I couldn’t put his story down. I was on the “Mad Dog” roller coaster and there was no getting off (not that I wanted to of course).
Men wanted to be him and the women wanted a piece of him but Travis was looking for something. He knew what he wanted and was waiting for the day it walked into his life:

I decided a long time ago I would feed on the vultures until a dove came along. A pigeon.
Brave. A communicator. Intelligent. Beautiful. Soft spoken. A creature that mates for life.
Unattainable until she has a reason to trust you.

The minute their paths crossed, there was a connection between Travis and Abby. He knew it and he wanted to explore it.

... But this girl was intriguing. Entertaining, even. I didn’t faze her, at least not
 in a positive way. My very presence seemed to make her want to puke,
and I found that strangely endearing.

Abby on the other hand had other ideas:

Her appearance immediately explained why she’d so easily agreed to come over.
She was trying to nauseate me into leaving her alone.

I found myself chuckling on numerous occasions seeing things from his perspective. We definitely got the “guy” side of things and the language he used was just brilliant:

I imagined this is what she looked like in the morning and then had to think about the
first ten minutes of Saving Private Ryan to keep my dick from getting hard.
Blood. Screaming. Visible intestines. Grenades. Gunfire. More blood.

Their relationship was never going to be straight forward   Abby had been running from a past and Travis... well he harboured his own demons. Even as friends, they would face obstacles, their feelings would confuse the hell out of them. Travis was faced with a whole host of new emotions he didn’t know how to deal with: vulnerability, fear, guilt and even jealousy. This was a steep learning curve for him and he wasn’t always going to get it right:

“I’m impulsive and hot tempered, and you get under my skin like no one else.
You act like you hate me one minute, and then you need me the next.
I never get anything right, and I don’t deserve you...”

There were times where I was just willing for them to hurry up and get together. I could see the pain and despair Travis was feeling, the effect it was all starting to have on him... the realisation that he might even love this girl:

In that moment I recognised that my feelings for her were a lot stronger than I thought.
Sometime between the moment we met, and holding her on that bathroom floor,
I had fallen in love with her.

Even as a couple, it wasn’t going to be plain sailing. The hurdles they faced just kept getting bigger and bigger, if it wasn’t Travis’s demons coming out of the wood work, it was Abby’s past coming to bite her on the back side.
“Walking Disaster” was definitely worth the wait. It was amazing. I know it wasn’t a sequel (but Jamie McGuire was very honest and upfront. She said it was going to be Travis’s point of view and that the story would remain the same). Jamie did a great job when it came to Travis’s language and  phraseology and it was  everything I would have expected from him. Not once did I feel that his thoughts or behaviour were out of character. We definitely got the male perspective on things and I loved that. Jamie's attention to detail just made the story come alive for me. Whether she was describing a place, a situation or even an emotion, I could visualise it all clearly in my mind. This just made my connection to the book and to the characters even stronger. All the feelings I went through whilst reading “Beautiful Disaster” resurfaced in “Walking Disaster”. Both books took me on complete highs and also gut wrenching lows. One minute I felt like all my Christmases had come at once, the next, it was like someone had run over my puppy.
If you loved “Beautiful Disaster” you won’t regret picking up “Walking Disaster”. Just go in remembering it is not a sequel but a change in point of view.
I rated this book a humongous 5 Hearts
A must read if you want another dose of Travis “Mad Dog” Maddox
Favourite quote from the book:

Travis: "The only thing I'm afraid of is a life is a life without you pigeon."
Abby: "Then you have nothing to be afraid of. We're forever."

Win a UK  paperback copy of "Walking Disaster" by entering below. (I will ship internationally)

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