Walking Disaster

Summary (from the publisher): 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.

Review: I received a copy of this book from Net Galley. 

First off, I probably should not have read this book. I know this is beloved by many readers, so I apologize for hating on Travis and Abby and their love story. Unfortunately, I hated the first book, Beautiful Disaster, and still made the dumb decision to read book two, hoping things would improve. I should have known right off the bat when I saw the tattoo and over the top muscle on the cover. Frankly, I'm even embarrassed to add this to the list of books I've read for poor quality of both cover and content.

Walking Disaster tells the exact same story as the one told in Beautiful Disaster, with the only difference is this novel is told from Travis' point of view rather than Abby's. So, in other words, it felt like McGuire sat down with a copy of the first book and went through page by page and rewrote it slightly differently for Travis' point of view. I thought rewriting the book from a different angle was an intriguing idea that could add a lot to scenes or conversations that occurred offstage in the first novel. However, little was added through Travis' narration; it was all rehashing of the same conversations and events.

I expressed my dislike for Abby and Travis' love story in my review of the first book, and since this was so similar, it all still stands true. The way they stupidly pretend to not be into each other for ages even though they're living together, the grotesque behavior of Travis sleeping around like it's his job before they start dating, the implausible speed of their romance (getting married while still in college and after only a few weeks of dating?? come on), the over the top rages and violent streaks that Travis is guilty of, and the false sense of drama when they constantly seem like they will not end up together. I will say though, aside from their impromptu marriage, this is probably a fairly typical depiction of young love - full of immature behavior and dumb decisions, all in the name of love. So I guess you could say that McGuire did get that right.

Stars: 2