Beautiful Disaster

Beautiful Disaster by Jamie McGuire is a new adult romance first published in 2011. The book became an international bestseller and was made into a feature film released in 2023. The book is part of McGuire’s Beautiful Disaster series; several of the subsequent books also became New York Times bestsellers. This guide refers to the Atria paperback edition published in 2012.

Content Warning: The novel depicts and romanticizes character traits that are often precursors of abusive relationships.

Plot Summary

First-year student Abigail Abernathy, or Abby, attends an underground fight club at Eastern University and catches the eye of the victor, Travis Maddox. Travis is notorious for being temperamental, unpredictable, and having one-night stands with the many women who find his “bad-boy” image attractive. A sophomore, Travis is cousin and roommate to Shepley Maddox, the boyfriend of Abby’s best friend, America Mason. Abby doesn’t want to be his next conquest but spends time with Travis on platonic terms. When the hot water is off in their dorm, America and Abby stay at Shepley and Travis’s apartment, and Abby sleeps in Travis’s bed with him. At his next fight, Travis proposes a bet. If Abby wins, he will abstain from sex for a month. If he wins, Abby will stay with him for a month. Travis wins the fight, and Abby loses the bet.

Abby continues to sleep in Travis’s bed but goes out on dates with Parker Hayes, one of Travis’s fraternity brothers. Parker is the type of boy Abby believes she should be with: good-looking, wealthy, and Harvard-bound. She insists that she and Travis are just friends and that she would never get involved with him. Her father drinks and gambles, and Abby left Kansas to separate herself from that lifestyle, but she still finds herself drawn to Travis. She likes being special to him. He throws her a surprise party for her 19th birthday, and then spends the night caring for her in the bathroom when she is sick after drinking too much alcohol.

Travis tells Abby he wants to be with her but fears he would screw things up. Abby recognizes that she is the only one who can calm his volatile temper. On the last night of the month of their bet, Abby has sex with Travis—her first time. The next morning, she sneaks back to her dorm, trying to avoid Travis, but when he finds her gone, he goes into a rage and destroys things in the apartment. Abby tries to go back to dating Parker, but when Travis admits he loves her, Abby returns his feelings, and they begin a relationship.

Abby takes pride in his protectiveness of her and her status as the woman who made Travis Maddox fall in love. She notes the attention this brings her from other students. Travis, however, is jealous and possessive. In the cafeteria, he beats up other students who make remarks about their relationship or try to flirt with Abby. At a Halloween party, Travis attacks a man who grabs Abby. Abby falls in the scuffle and tells Travis she can’t be with him until he has a handle on his temper. The next morning, he apologizes and they get back together.

Travis takes Abby to poker night with his dad and four brothers, and the Maddox men are delighted to learn that Abby is the daughter of Mick Abernathy, a poker legend who claims Abby stole his luck when she turned 13. Travis gets a tattoo of the word Pigeon, his nickname for Abby, as a symbol of his devotion, but Abby worries Travis is using her as a talisman, just as her father did.

When Mick shows up needing Abby’s help to pay a gangster a debt he owes, Abby takes America and Travis to Vegas to win the money by playing poker. Travis wins a fight for the mobster and agrees to more fights, but Abby tells him she doesn’t want to get involved in that life. Again, she lies to Travis, sneaks away, and avoids him in an attempt to end the relationship.

Despite their breakup, she keeps her word to cook Thanksgiving dinner for Travis’s family and feels drawn back to him. Just when Abby decides she wants to be with Travis again, he tells her he understands he’s not good for her. Abby tries to be happy with Parker, but she’s miserable being apart from Travis. Travis asks her to come to his next fight, where Abby is cornered by an unknown man. Travis intervenes, but the encounter makes Abby feel that Travis treats her like a possession. At a Valentine’s Day party at the frat house, Abby refuses to dance with a drunken Travis, but he carries her out of the party and insists that he belongs to her. Won over by this admission and the vehemence of his feelings, Abby decides she belongs with Travis after all.

At Travis’s next fight, an accidental fire in the hallway kills several students. He rescues Abby and she concludes that their being together is inevitable. She asks him to fly to Vegas and get married. They do, and Abby gets a tattoo with the words Mrs. Maddox, proving to Travis that she is indeed his.