Review: Beautiful Oblivion by Jamie McGuire

Beautiful Oblivion

Jamie McGuire

(The Maddox Brothers #1)

Publication Date: July 1, 2014

Paperback, 320 pages, Atria Books

Genres: New Adult, Romance, Contemporary

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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.