Genre: NA Romance
Published: July 12, 2012
Pages: 431
The new Abby Abernathy is a good girl. She doesn’t drink or swear and has the appropriate number of cardigans in her wardrobe. With the darkness of her past behind her, she believes her freshman year at college is the start of a new beginning. But then she meets Travis Maddox.
Lean, cut, and covered in tattoos, Eastern University’s Walking One-Night Stand is exactly what Abby needs to avoid. Intrigued by her resistance to his appeal, Travis tricks her with a simple bet. If he loses, he must remain abstinent for a month. If Abby loses, she must live in his apartment for the same amount of time. Either way, Travis has no idea that he has met his match in this “beautifully sexy, beautifully intense, and beautifully perfect” (Jessica Park, New York Times bestselling author).
Lean, cut, and covered in tattoos, Eastern University’s Walking One-Night Stand is exactly what Abby needs to avoid. Intrigued by her resistance to his appeal, Travis tricks her with a simple bet. If he loses, he must remain abstinent for a month. If Abby loses, she must live in his apartment for the same amount of time. Either way, Travis has no idea that he has met his match in this “beautifully sexy, beautifully intense, and beautifully perfect” (Jessica Park, New York Times bestselling author).
This was the December book pick for my Book Hangout book club. If I had not previously owned the book, I would not have made the effort to read it, but I bought it years before I found out what type of person McGuire is. This is my honest very spoiler filled review.
I will admit that I went in to this story wanting to not like it and the story delivered for me in spades, but that's why this review is going to include lots of spoilers because I want it to be clear that the low rating is due to the book being not great. To start, Abby has a serious main character complex. She genuinely thinks everyone at her university is talking about her like all the time. In fact, she chose this small university to escape from Wichita, Kansas where presumably everyone knew everything about her. For people not from Kansas, that might sound reasonable, but I know Wichita is the biggest city in Kansas (it's literally the reason my phone area code changed when I was a kid). I can believe there are circles where she's well known, but I don't see the mob having a presence in college.
And the reason she has so much notoriety? Because her dad was a big shot poker player, which she doesn't want people to know because apparently lots of people follow poker.
Then Travis is famous school wide because of his participation and dominance in an underground fighting ring, that is supposed to be a well-kept secret. And he's the school bicycle, every girl has had a ride, and they all pursued him, not the other way around. Because that's realistic. Naturally he wants Abby because she's the only one who didn't immediately jump on his dick. But wait, he keeps telling her that they're just friends and then gets upset, violent and a bit controlling when she acts like they're just friends.
Eventually the whole school is talking about how she's playing two guys because she's dating Parker (I think that's his name) and living with Travis (because of a bet, mind you) and her "best" friend tells her, essentially, that it looks like she's playing two guys because she is. Remember Travis is still saying "We're just friends" when this is going on. Abby is just supposed to know that he's basically madly in love with her because he stopped bringing random chicks home after the first time.
Amidst all this, Abby's father finds out where she is and gives her some pretty bad news. He's racked up a massive amount of debt with a known mobster and if Abby doesn't pay it off, he's going to be swimming with the fish. So Abby and crew head to Vegas to transform the 11k she's saved so far for a car into what her dad needs to pay his debt. But uh-oh, the floor boss at the casino she's gambling at with her fake ID knows her and that she's not old enough. In exchange for going to dinner with him, he lets her keep playing until midnight. Of course that's not enough time for her to win everything her dad owes, so instead of just going to another casino with her fake ID and continuing to gamble, because she's a poker savant, she goes to the mob boss who is known for not accepting partial payments to ask if he'll accept a partial payment.
Naturally shit goes sideways, but never fear because Travis takes out two goons single-handedly, one of which was the favorite to win a big fight the very next night. But the mob boss is a generous guy. If Travis steps in to the fight, he'll forgive the rest of the debt. So Travis fights and wins and now the mob boss wants him to fight for him once a month. Abby says absolutely not, but Travis is blinded by money. Remember all of this could have been avoided if she'd just gone to a second casino!
So they fight and break up because Abby doesn't want that life. But Travis is a possessive touch with red flags in all the wrong places. He intentionally sabotages every effort she makes to meet someone and interrupts a date she's on with Parker (?) to tell her that he needs her at his next fight. His cousin Shepley won't be there to protect her from the crowd though, so he asks his brother to come to the fight to protect her while he's busy.
At the fight, the room is packed as per usual. It's also in a maze-like basement with only two windows to get in and out apparently. But Travis knows the way so it's fine. That is until one of the oil lamps that they use for lighting gets knocked over and starts a fire. So it's time to evacuate and chaos ensues. Instead of just going upstairs and using a door that is almost certainly required by law to be unlocked from the inside to get out, since authorities will be on the way anyway, Abby tries to find her way through the maze back to the window. But she can't get out on her own and Travis' brother abandoned her to follow some other students, all of them ignoring the fact that their window was a special entrance for Travis.
When Travis gets outside and can't find Abby, he goes back inside to find her and saves the day. But then they're worried that his brother didn't make it out because they can't find him. He finally shows up and says he'd been waiting at her dorm for them. All of this makes Abby realize that Travis really does love her, so they fly to Vegas and get married.
There were just way too many ridiculous, unrealistic events in this story for me to give it more than the 1.2864 out of 5 stars that I'm giving it. - Katie
Jamie McGuire is the New York Times bestselling author of Beautiful Disaster, Walking Disaster, A Beautiful Wedding, Almost Beautiful, and the Maddox Brothers series. She lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma, with her children and two rescue pups, Finn and Coco. Please visit JamieMcGuire.com.
No comments:
Post a Comment