My Rating- 5 STARS!!
Synopsis- Abby Abernathy is a good girl. She doesn’t drink or swear, and she has the appropriate number of cardigans in her wardrobe. Abby believes she has enough distance from the darkness of her past, but when she arrives at college with her
best friend, 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 wants—and needs—to avoid. He spends his nights winning money in a floating fight ring, and his days as the ultimate college campus charmer. Intrigued by Abby’s resistance to his appeal, 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’s apartment for the same amount of time. Either way, Travis has no idea that he has met his match
My Review- This book pulled on every emotion I am capable of. The characters are devastatingly flawed and doomed to a tough relationship full of heartbreak, anger, violent arguments and hopeless love. Abby, the protagonist of this love story, is strong minded, secretive, beautiful and tough. Her upbringing was not the greatest. She ran away from her childhood, from a gambling, manipulative, alcoholic father to start fresh and leave behind that kind of lifestyle...and yet she falls right in to the arms of Travis 'mad dog' Maddox, a fighter in an underground Circle, a man who drinks to forget his
pain, a man with a violent temper and is incredibly obsessive. Its all she hates... and yet all she wants.
We are not fooled by Travis in this amazing book. We know what we are getting in to by the first few chapters. He earns money by fighting, he takes a different girl home every night and has a box full of condoms in his drawer ready for anything. He expects women to fall at his feet, and they usually do. Every girl wants to Tame Travis Maddox. He is hot tempered and severely protective of his friends and everyone tries not to piss him off. So yeh...he is a violent SOB with an attitude problem. But this
isn't all Travis has to offer and that's what Abby and, hopefully, the reader sees! When she deflects his every charm he wants her all the more and their friendship soon gets blurred with real feelings. He protects her, he treats her well and shows her he isn't just a dirty scoundrel. He promises that he will
make mistakes, that he doesn't known how to love.....so how can we hate him??
Travis is not the typical superhero boyfriend that the female instantly loves and he is just so perfect and cheesy that it makes me a little sick...no, he is real. There are real men like him everywhere, messed up and 'fucking up' (his words not mine!) He is a damn breath of fresh air!!! And Abby is hardly innocent in this equation. She faces his tempers with equal fire, she accepts (and encourages sometimes) his violent outbursts and has the odd one herself. She is messed up from a life she escaped and runs at the first sign of trouble with Travis. Time and Time again they are pulled back to each other, whether through jealousy or a fight that becomes passionate love, of circumstances around them. They are made for each other, whether to hurt or love each other.
And this is possibly the longest I have spoken about a book. But this is what it did to me! Jamie McGuire wrote a novel that had my head whirling and spinning, even while I was trying to work and sleep. I felt Anger, Hate, Love, Regret, Forgiveness and Longing and so much more. Is Travis my ideal man in the real world? Hell no! Is he someone I could love, protect and want to fight the world for, even after seeing his every flaw? HELL YES!
So I will be buying Walking Disaster and delving in to Travis' head and find out what its like to be there, in the mess that is his brain. I don't think the author set out to create a knight in shining armour with this one. She created something real, a teenage whirlwind of angst and hormones and I am looking forward to another 6 hours of it