I still remember how I came across this masterpiece. It was in 2016 when I first heard of it. I was browsing through a bookstore, scanning the shelves for my next read with my friend Jane. The store owner recommended we read his favourite, “Beautiful Disaster.” Jane was thrilled, so I decided to give it a shot.
Little did I know then that these books would hold such significance for me. Now, in 2024, I am rereading them for a second time. I cannot wait to immerse myself in Travis and Abby’s world once again. This time, Jane is not with me. I want you to come along with me so we can explore the romance in the Beautiful Disaster series!
Beautiful Disaster Series Order:
The Beautiful Disaster consists of four books, and here’s the advised reading order:
- Beautiful Disaster (2011)
- Walking Disaster (2011)
- A Beautiful Wedding (2013)
Following this order provides an experience of the story’s progression as the author planned, chronologically telling secrets and character stories.
Age Rating:
According to the consensus, the Beautiful Disaster series is considered suitable for people aged 17 and above due to its Mature Content, such as sexual scenes, strong language, and violence. This also has Dark Themes leading to sensitive topics such as past traumatic incidents.
Genre:
The “Beautiful Disaster” series primarily focuses on the New Adult and Romance genres. It includes themes such as love, relationships, personal growth, and overcoming challenges, often with a focus on college students’ characters navigating the complexity of their lives and relationships.
Overview:
Beautiful Disaster is a new adult contemporary novel and it is about our main character, Abby, and she is a good girl. She is 19, she has started college, and she goes to a fight one day with some of her friends, like an underground fighting ring. And during that fight, she ends up meeting Travis. Travis is the bad boy on campus. Travis is a fighter; he is promiscuous, and he’s the bad boy.
And during that time, they spark a kind of friendship. She’s immune to his tricks, you know, she doesn’t want to be with him, she finds him attractive but doesn’t want to be with him. They start hanging out, and a bet ends up happening. And with that bet, if she loses, she has to stay with him in his apartment for a month, and if he fails, he has to be absent for a month. And things kind of take off from there.
Main Characters:
Central Characters:
● Travis “Mad Dog” Maddox: He is the main character known for his disobedience and combat skills.
● Abby Abernathy: She is the other main character, a new college student who decided to stay on the straight and narrow.
Recurring Characters:
● Shepard “Shep” Conrad: Travis’ best friend and roommate, a loyal and supportive person.
● America “America Singer”: She is a close friend of Travis, known for her sass and quick humour.
● Crew: A member of Travis’ friend circle, often interested in their jokes.
● Cousins: Travis has several cousins who appear throughout the series, which includes Parker, Ellen, and Vaughn.
● Kimberly “Kim” Daniels: Abby’s best friend and companion, who offers her tireless support.
● Thomas Abernathy: Abby’s father who plays a role in later books.
● Tristan Abernathy: Abby’s more immature brother, who becomes a more significant presence as the series continues.
Romantic Interests:
● Marcellus “Marcel” Staples: A wealthy charmer who briefly captured Abby’s engagement in the first book.
Additional Characters:
● Professors, classmates, and other college characters interact with the main characters throughout their journey.
Plot Summary:
Following is the Plot Summary of Beautiful Disaster series
Beautiful Disaster:
The series begins with Abby, who decides to run away from her house because her father, Mick, used her to earn money by making her play poker games even though she was underage.
Abby had expressed her desire to go to college and complete her studies, but her father wasn’t letting her do that. He knew that by making her play poker, he could earn money without putting in a lot of effort. She didn’t inform Mick where she was going as she knew that if she did, he would bring her back.
Abby was admitted to a college where she was going to share her room with her best friend, America. Though Abby was tired after travelling all the way from Vegas, America convinced her to come with her and her boyfriend Shepley to watch a freestyle street fighting competition. Abby was sure that she would enjoy it, but unexpectedly, she met somebody who made her smitten.
Travis Maddox, who was a former college student, said he was a street fighting champion. During the fight, Travis directed many blows towards his opponent, and during the bout, he said to Abby, But his opponent made a blow from the back. Travis got up and directed a strong blow at him, which led to blood splattering on Abby’s clothes. When she left, she collided with someone, but she fell into Travis’ arms.
Shelby then told him that they should go because they had won a lot of money. Abby learned that Travis was a street fighter, that Travis was a street fighter, and that Travis was Shepley’s cousin. And the next day, she couldn’t stop thinking about this sexy guy that she even dreamed about. In the next scene, she is sitting with her friend Shepley, and Travis appears and puts his hand on Abby’s shoulder.
She told him, Who do you think you are? Please don’t pretend that you don’t know my name. In general, you’re not my favourite type. He replied, We’ll see. During the lecture, Abby opened her Instagram account, and Travis saw her. She said to herself that he was very attractive, and he was sitting behind her and overhearing her thoughts. When she left her phone, he told her that he saw everything.
| Publisher | Atria Books |
| Publishing Date | First published May 26, 2011 |
| Language | English |
| Pages | 432 Pages |
| Series | Beautiful (#1) |
| Literary Awards | Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Young Adult Fiction and for Goodreads Author (2011) |
| Characters | Abby Abernathy, Travis Maddox |
| ISBN-10 | 1476712042 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-1476712048 |
She told him that she was browsing Instagram normally and that he wasn’t her favourite type. He then asked her out on a date at 8 o’clock. They meet and go out together, and he tells Abby that his mother died when he was an infant while his father raised him with four other children. So he became skilled in fighting because he always fought with them when they were young. Abby, on the other hand, was in denial of his mother’s death, as she felt that Travis was not the kind of guy she was looking for.
Walking Disaster:
The story continues Abby wanted somebody more stable, someone who was serious about his career and did not recklessly take part in fighting competitions to earn money. Abby met a guy named Parker, and they started seeing each other. Everybody in that town seemed to be street-fighting fans, and even Parker took Abby to watch a match. Abby didn’t know that Travis was one of the competitors that night, and when he saw her clad in a beautiful dress, he got a bit angry. She said I’m not a fighter. I’m angry because she had been stalling him and not replying to his texts. And here she was on a date with another guy.
Travis wanted Abby to admit that she liked him, but she just kept running away from him because Travis did not match the ideal image she had in her mind of a good guy. While they were arguing, Travis’s opponent scorned him, and seeing how massive he looked, Abby was sure that Travis was not going to win that match. Travis wanted to make things interesting, so he made a wager with Abby, and it was decided that if Travis’s opponent were going to win the match, he would not have any flings or affairs for the next three months.
And if the opposite happened, then Abby would have to move in with him for one month. Abby agreed to it, and she was shocked when Travis actually knocked his opponent out before he could even land a single punch. Abby moved in with Travis, and though she had many problems in the beginning with the untidy manner in which the boys lived, she slowly started getting emotionally attached to Travis. Travis decided to take Abby to the gym, and Abby was going to be the only one who would come home for dinner and make her meet his family.
Abby met the Maddox brothers, and they already seemed to know a lot about her. They decided to play poker together, but Abby backed off by saying that she was not interested in playing. Even the name of the game brought back memories of her childhood, and she remembered how her father used her for his purposes. Abby gets triggered when one of the brothers tells her that she can come and play with them as they will not be very hard on her.
Abby took the challenge, and the brothers were shocked to see how good she was at it. Abby’s father started telling everybody that back in the day, there were stories about a guy named Mick whose daughter was a poker prodigy, and she used to accompany him wherever he went. Travis’s father figured out that Abby was lucky 13, and she had been hiding this fact from everyone. The Maddox brothers got starstruck that they had been defeated by none other than the poker prodigy herself, about whom they had only heard stories up until then.
Travis and Abby got intimate that night, though Abby was still in denial and constantly feeding herself lies that she didn’t like him. Travis saw a text on her laptop, and he thought that she had been secretly seeing another guy behind his back when, in reality, the text was from her father. Travis stayed out the whole night, and Abby got scared as she didn’t know where he had suddenly left in the middle of the night.
Travis came back in the morning, and that’s when Abby told him that Mick was her father, and Travis took a sigh of relief. Travis arranged for a pre-birthday surprise, and Abby said for her to make up for his actions, but Abby was still mad at him because of the way he had behaved when he had seen her father’s text. Abby and Travis had a heated argument, but after that, they reconciled when they realized that both had fallen for each other, and there was no point in resisting that feeling.
| Publisher | Atria Books |
| Publishing Date | First published April 2, 2013 |
| Language | English |
| Pages | 448 Pages |
| Series | Beautiful (#2) |
| Literary Awards | Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Romance (2013) |
| Characters | Abby Abernathy, Travis Maddox |
| ISBN-10 | 1476712980 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-1476712987 |
Mick Abernathy once again came back into Abby’s life, and she came to know that he was in heavy debt. Benny, the casino owner, wanted Abby to start playing again and give him back his money. Benny sent his guy to bring Abby to his place, and though Abby resisted at first, She agreed to play just this one time and pay off the debt. Abby had seen how miserable her father looked, and she couldn’t leave him in that helpless state. Abby was still underage,
so the danger of her being caught while playing was still there. Abby went to a casino, joined the high-stakes table, and won the game. She was leaving the casino with the chips when
an old friend named Jesse, who worked there as a security chief, came and met her. Jesse told Abby that he couldn’t let her take the chips because he knew that she was underage.
Abby had a nervous breakdown, and she didn’t know what to tell Benny and her father. She called her father and told him to go into hiding, dispose of his mobile, and buy a burner
phone, and then she went to Benny’s office to say to him about what had happened. Benny told her that she would have to play poker for him, and they would split the proceeds, but Abby didn’t want to play poker for a living.
Travis stormed inside Benny’s office, and he was there. Benny and his guards dropped them all to the ground, and they escaped together with Abby. She was angry at him because he was following her and saved her, and she told him that she could have solved the problem on her own, but he told her that he cared for her and that he loved her, so she hurried to him and kissed him, and they made love.
They stayed in a hotel for that night, and Travis decided that he would enrol himself in a street fighting competition to pay off Mick’s debt. Travis knew the kind of risk he was taking because the guy who was up against him was no amateur brawler but a lethal fighter.
Meanwhile, Abby is still figuring out where Travis has gone when she gets the biggest shock of her life in Beautiful Disaster. She accidentally saw her father with Jesse, the guy who had taken her chips, and she realized that she was being tricked into believing that her father was in debt so that she would start playing poker again. Abby felt shattered. Her father had broken her trust and betrayed her in the worst possible manner. Abby confronted her father and told him that she didn’t want to see him ever again, then went to the arena where Travis was supposed to have his fight, and she saved Travis before he got himself killed.
A Beautiful Wedding:
The novel continues the life story of Abby and Travis. Abby found a bag of cash in her car, and she realized that it was the same money she had won in that casino that Jesse was going to give to her father.
Fortunately, everything ended on a good note, and now, in addition to having a loving boyfriend, Abby also had the money to buy a new car. She was able to pay for her education. Probably, Abby and Travis will start living together, and Abby will get the love she deserves and hasn’t gotten in her life.
| Publisher | Atria Books |
| Publishing Date | First published December 10, 2013 |
| Language | English |
| Pages | 148 Pages |
| Series | Beautiful (#2.5) |
| Characters | Abby Abernathy, Travis Maddox |
| ISBN-10 | 1476759545 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-1476759548 |
My Review:
While I had some challenges with this book, I want to emphasize that these are my viewpoints, and I fully respect differing opinions. If you found joy in this book, that’s wonderful, and I celebrate that diversity in tastes. For me, the initial parts of the series held promise. Travis had a complexity that intrigued me, and Abby seemed relatable enough at the start.
However, as the narrative progressed, my feelings shifted. Travis’s darker traits began to overshadow his redeeming qualities, and Abby’s character development felt disjointed, lacking the continuity I had hoped for. The sudden revelations without proper foreshadowing felt jarring and disconnected from the story’s initial setup.
Most concerning to me was the portrayal of the relationship between the main characters. While I understand that relationships can be nuanced, the dynamics between Travis and Abby felt toxic, with behaviours that shouldn’t be romanticized or idealized. It’s crucial to recognize unhealthy patterns and offer support to those experiencing them.
Reflecting on the book as a whole, I can’t overlook the joy I felt. It’s fortunate because there were elements I genuinely enjoyed initially. However, given the direction the story took, I rate it 3.5 stars. It’s a reminder of the importance of critically examining portrayals of relationships in literature and media.
Conclusion:
Overall, the author has put her best effort into writing this series, and it really worked for us. By the end of the day, I cannot resist the charm of these books. The characters in the story are very well developed and their relations among them. The only problem with this series is the flimsy excuses of characters just like Travis and Abby, and their relationship could be better in the future. The author’s writing style for this book was good, and she knew where to put suspense and thriller and where to put love and romance. Let’s go with the series, wasting our time.