(The Maddox Brothers #1)
Publication
Date: July 1, 2014
Paperback, 320 pages, Atria Books
Genres:
New Adult, Romance, Contemporary
The Beautiful Disaster and Walking
Disaster phenomenon continues in the first heart-pounding new adult romance in
The Maddox Brothers series.
Fiercely independent Camille
"Cami" Camlin gladly moved on from her childhood before it was over.
She has held down a job since before she could drive, and moved into her own
apartment after her freshman year of college. Now tending bar at The Red Door,
Cami doesn’t have time for much else besides work and classes, until a trip to
see her boyfriend is cancelled, leaving her with a first weekend off in almost
a year.
Trenton Maddox was the king of
Eastern State University, dating co-eds before he even graduated high school.
His friends wanted to be him, and women wanted to tame him, but after a tragic
accident turned his world upside down, Trenton leaves campus to come to grips
with the crushing guilt.
Eighteen months later, Trenton is
living at home with his widower father, and works full-time at a local tattoo
parlor to help with the bills. Just when he thinks his life is returning to
normal, he notices Cami sitting alone at a table at The Red.
As the baby sister of four rowdy
brothers, Cami believes she’ll have no problem keeping her new friendship with
Trenton Maddox strictly platonic. But when a Maddox boy falls in love, he loves
forever—even if she is the only reason their already broken family could fall
apart.
In the first installment of the
Maddox Brothers books, readers can experience the rush of reading Beautiful
Disaster for the first time, all over again.
My Review
I have to start out by saying that New Adult books and
myself have not meshed well in the past. I typically find them cliché with bad
writing and awkward dialog. Thankfully, Jamie McGuire has helped bring back
some of my like—I can’t exactly call it love yet—for the genre.
I was hesitant to read this book because I didn’t think I
would really care about Travis’ brothers. While I found them fun in the original
book, Beautiful Disaster, an entire
series based on their love lives didn’t really hold a huge appeal for me. However,
once I started reading the series, I couldn’t put it down, but I’ll stick to
just reviewing Beautiful Oblivion for
now.
The characters of this book were very entertaining. McGuire
did a good job of mixing Camille’s personality with Trenton’s. I do wish that
she hadn’t used so much slut-shaming, aggressiveness, and other derogatory
comments to shape her characters’ personalities. I also wish Trenton and Cami
weren’t smokers. I find that extremely unattractive and I almost stopped
reading because of that. I’m not sorry to say that smoking is a huge turnoff
for me. It’s smelly and it can kill you. After I learned that Trenton was a
smoker, it was hard to imagine him as sexy, just because I could smell him in
the back of my mind and it made me want to throw up. Thankfully, I was able to
move that fact to the back of my mind, but I just wish it wasn’t a part of the
story.
I also didn’t like how Cami just let Trenton get away with
some pretty sketchy things. She also had to hold him back from fights way too
many times. It slows the story down and makes Trent look like a jackass when
the protagonist has to hold her boyfriend off from punching the daylights out
of someone.
So while the characters weren’t as great as Travis and Abby,
the plot of the story was pretty good. I enjoyed reading about a simple love
story between two college-age people. I also liked how Trent and Cami had a
backstory together. I wish that had been expanded on a little more, though. OH!
I almost forgot to mention that twist at the end! I was so surprised! I had to
immediately pick up the sequel once I read the last line.
All in all, Beautiful
Oblivion is a good start to a good new adult romance series. And praise
like that doesn’t come from me very often when it comes to the NA genre.
*Note: I purchased
a copy of this book for myself. This in no way affected my opinion/review.
