Walking Disaster by Jamie McGuire

Walking Disaster by Jamie McGuire
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I debated for a long time after this came out whether or not to read this, because it is basically a retelling of a story I really liked and I was afraid it would not be able to live up to the original. But, in the end I wanted to see if Travis's point of view lived up to Abby's telling. It didn't, and now I regret reading it because it actually takes away of how much I loved Beautiful Disaster. I didn't hate the book, but I didn't love it, either.

Here's what worked for me:
-I do like that the author was able to seemingly capture the male point of view. She did not pretty Travis's thoughts up, but rather made them crass, insensitive, and sexist. As far as characters went, I thought he was done well with that respect.

-My favorite parts of the story were the scenes with Travis and Shep (and sometimes America). Those scenes are what saved the book for me. They went a long way in revealing a bit more of Travis than we had before.

Here's what did not work for me:
-We knew from Beautiful Disaster that Travis was basically a jerk who treated women as worthless objects to be used for his pleasure at his leisure. However, in BD he redeemed himself by the way he loved Abby with everything he had and everything he was. In this story he comes off more as the desperate, crazy stalker type. He was not endearing, he was troubling.

-My real problem with the story is the fact that it did not seem like a wholly complete story. The first half was more of a stream of consciousness rather than an entire 3-dimensional story with other characters and dialogue involved, and even after reading the entire book I felt that I didn't know Travis Maddox any more than I had at the beginning. And wasn't that the whole point of this book, to get inside Travis's head? The second half did have more interaction with the other characters and dialogue, but Travis still failed to add anything new to the story.

In the end I was just left disappointed. I had high hopes, and they were failed to be met. If you're a fan of BD, I'm not saying don't read this, I'm just saying go into it with the things mentioned above in mind so you are not disappointed as well.


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