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Beautiful Disaster Review

Title/Author: Beautiful Disaster - By: Jamie McGuire

Summary:
The new Abby Abernathy is a good girl. She doesn’t drink or swear, and she has the appropriate percentage of cardigans in her wardrobe. Abby believes she has enough distance between her and the darkness of her past, but when she arrives at college with her best friend America, her path to a new beginning is quickly challenged by Eastern University’s Walking One-Night Stand.

Travis Maddox, lean, cut, and covered in tattoos, is exactly what Abby needs—and wants—to avoid. He spends his nights winning money in a floating fight ring, and his days as the charming college co-ed. Intrigued by Abby’s resistance to his charms, Travis tricks her into his daily life with a simple bet. If he loses, he must remain abstinent for a month. If Abby loses, she must live in Travis’ apartment for the same amount of time. Either way, Travis has no idea that he has met his match.

My Thoughts:
This book is seriously like crack. Because I felt like shit for liking it, but I couldn't pull myself away. And then I read it a couple more times. There are so many typos I wanted to tear my eyes out, but I seriously love Jamie McGuire, regardless. I have nothing but respect for authors who self-publish, and McGuire is doing one hell of a job because she is very popular. This is yet another book who's setting is a college campus (love!).

Ms. McGuire has a real talent for developing her characters. By the end of all of her books, the reader has developed a strong relationship with all characters, even the more minor ones. I spent most of the book wanting to slap both of the main characters (Travis and Abby), but still rooting for them at the same time. I told you, it's like crack. Travis was absolutely crazy at times, but strangely, this just made me love him as a character even more. I loved him, then I hated him, then I loved him again. There are some characters that I love so much that I want to kick the female lead out on her face and take the boy for myself. This was not the case with Travis and Abby. Yeah I liked Travis, but I really loved his relationship with Abby even more. McGuire developed their relationship, however disfuctional it might be, so well that had no choice but to root for both of them. I liked Abby for the most part, but she made some really poor decisions that made me want to wring her by the neck and knock some sense into her.

Abby was a good narrator, but I wished that the book had been from both her and Travis' point of views. Good news, though! Jamie McGuire has started writing a new book, Beautiful Disaster from Travis' point of view. YEEE!

I really loved America's character as well. I would love to have a best friend like her. You gotta love Shepley and Finch too, even though they were more minor characters. Shep and Finch both just kind of popped up when it was convenient. I would have liked to know more about them. I wish I could have killed Parker in his sleep, that tool of a boy. Harsh, but true.

The cover is really confusing to me. A butterfly in a jar? Really? This really has nothing to do with the story at all. This first cover that was released was even worse. It was a picture of a close up of a girl's tongue with a garbled up painting replacing her tongue. Just plain weird.

My favorite line:
"To douchebags!" he said, gesturing to Brad. "And to girls that break your heart," he bowed his head to me. His eyes lost focus. "And to the absolute fucking horror of losing your best friend because you were stupid enough to fall in love with her."

So...read this book. I stayed up until 4am reading it because I couldn't tear myself away.

As I Wake Review

Title/Author: As I Wake - By: Elizabeth Scott

Summary:
Ava is welcomed home from the hospital by a doting mother, lively friends, and a crush finally beginning to show interest. There's only one problem: Ava can't remember any of them - and can't shake the eerie feeling that she's not who they say she is.

Ava struggles to break through her amnesiac haze as she goes through the motions of high-school life, but the memories that surface take place in a very different world, where Ava and familiar-faced friends are under constant scrutiny and no one can be trusted. Ava doesn't know what to make of these visions, or of the boy who is at the center of them all, until he reappears in her life and offers answers . . . but only in exchange for her trust.
 
My Thoughts:
Okay, this review is very difficult for me to write. Elizabeth Scott is one of my favorite authors, but I seriously don't know what kind of drugs she was on when she wrote this book. I didn't have any idea of what was going on the entire time I was reading and the ending was just plain horrible. Usually I love Scott's writing, but in this book the writing was unstable and the characters were poorly developed. I cannot even begin to explain how unnecessarily confusing the plot was. Scott provides no explaination of anything that is going on and leaves the reader utterly confused.
 
If she would have gone into more detail and explained the plot line, this book might have potential. As it is, however, I was quite proud of myself that I managed to force myself to finish this book. Sadly, you disappointed me Ms. Scott. I usually love your writing. This book was one hot mess.

Oh, and one more thing. What kind of a boy's name is Morgan? Seriously? You couldn't have picked something a tad bit more...I don't know, MALE?