Walking Disaster by Jamie McGuire

I received this book for free from Publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

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.

One of the things I’m most grateful for as a book blogger is noticing my growth as a reader. Yes I know that your taste are meant to change and shift, but I truly didn’t notice how much my taste, likes, dislikes, pet peeves, and thoughts have changed over the past year or so since I’ve discovered Goodreads. Case in point. I read Beautiful Disaster in December of 2011, and I LOVED IT! I didn’t think it was a “good” read, I didn’t think the characters were “great”, I didn’t think the writing was “nice”, I thought it was all fan-flipping-tastic! I loved the story, the angst, the intensity of it all! And while Walking Disaster had those same elements to the same degree, I found myself not being totally head over heels in love. In fact, my emotions were so varying during this read that it took me a while just to properly put a star rating to it.

I started off the way I expected to, which was to gush and get all gooey eyed over Travis. I seriously was all

I mean, come on! Walking Disaster is the same fantastic story of Beautiful Disaster only told from Mr. Sexy Travis’s point of view. When I originally heard that this was truly happening and wasn’t just some outlandish rumor I admit that I was skeptical. I loved Beautiful Disaster and while I love Travis too I was afraid of the possibility that maybe his point of view wouldn’t hold up to my expectations, of course that was the wrong thing for me to worry about.

Something that I think is really important to point out is that while Walking Disaster is indeed the same story as Beautiful Disaster it actually felt like a different story at points. Yes, I laughed, I fumed, I even grunted a few times just like with BD, but that passion and love I felt for BD just wasn’t there with WD. And it’s not that the story was lacking or totally different it’s just that, as a reader my taste have changed. I no longer view Travis’s begging and temper issues as a appealing trait and Abby’s tendency to run at the first sign of trouble is no longer something I can get over. I wanted to love this story as much as I loved BD, and I’m sure that Octavia of 2011 would have, but the person that I am today just wouldn’t allow it.

Walking Disaster is the whirlwind story of Travis falling in love with Abby. A story filled with angst, and love, and hate, and bickering, and so many other high emotions!  But it’s also a story of how two people with complicated past and powerful personalities can come together to make something both beautiful and utterly devastating. I loved how well we could see the emotions that ran through these two but I wasn’t a fan of how those emotions were handled and often portrayed. I felt that the codependency that was showcased often overshadowed the honest to God love that was beneath all that mess. And the various burst of rage from BOTH sides just didn’t jibe with me either. So often we look at men with mock outrage over their temper issues but how often do we genuinely look at a woman in the same light? Abby was just as co-dependant as Travis with her own set of anger issues and a total inability to face her problems head on.

I did genuinely enjoy the story and I loved that I was able to peak inside Travis’s head but I just can’t give this book 5 stars. I appreciate the change in storyline, thanks to Travis’s POV and I’m happy that we all got this chance to hear both sides but I do believe my days of swooning over Travis are over.