Series: Beautiful

Finally-the guy’s POV after a stunning novel that left us all breathless and begging for more…and I can’t help but to be a tad disappointed. What happened Jamie? Where’s the passion? Words are just words, there has to be fire to make a novel into a masterpiece, and there definitely was not. It felt like she only put time into Travis’s character, which she should since that’s what we wanted, but that doesn’t make it okay to forget about Abby, the girl we could relate to or love in the last installment. It felt so forced at times, like she was only writing the story for her fans and didn’t have the patience to be re-writing essentially the same story. But it really wasn’t the same story was it? A lot of times I felt conversations were cut from this edition that I had enjoyed in BD, and after finishing I feel slightly cheated.

Abby was a likeable character in BD, but in WD, she was merely a character strategically placed in certain moments-she wasn’t a fully developed character like Travis was in BD.

I CRIED for Travis in BD, I SYMPATHIZED with Abby, and here, in WD, I didn’t know Abby, not really. If I had only read WD, I would have said Abby was a selfish bitch. That’s not the case, though, Abby was doing what she could to protect herself. That doesn’t translate if you don’t show emotion in the other main character. She seemed cold, distant, and calculating, and I felt she was put in an unjust light. In BD, we all knew she was being harsh, but there was a reason behind it, we saw her thought process and knew her hurt. In WD, anyone would question why Abby was Trav’s Pigeon. I hate rating a book I loved previously so low, but in all honesty, I really am only rating it so high bc of my love for BD and the last 1/4 of the novel, where I believe Jamie actually put some passion into writing. The rest, though? It was sterile and I had a difficult time finishing it and not skipping the end to read another book. I know I might get lynched by Travis fans, but hey, I’m a Travis fan too, he was my favorite for a while-but if the story doesn’t work, it doesn’t work.

There was some good too. For instance, Shep and America were great, and we really got to know them as characters-especially Shep. I loved that they got more of a roll in the story. We were let into their little inner circle, before Abby was a part of Travis’s life in a romantic way, and we saw the side of America where she was on Travis’s side the whole time. I really enjoyed that character development on her part, because you really never knew how much she was rooting for their relationship. My favorite part was the last 1/4 of the book, where Abby and Travis are getting back together again, and I especially loved the epilogue. It was a fun addition and I can tell Jamie really enjoyed showing us the future of Trav and Abby. I believe that if she had only done this epilogue and little pieces or chapters in Trav’s POV, it would have been more successful, because the latter part of WD was 4-5 stars.

Even though we put each other through hell, we’d found heaven. Maybe that was more than a couple of sinners deserved, but I wasn’t going to complain.

I get it, I finally get why authors only do tidbits and certain chapters from the male perspective unless the story was always meant to be told that way, like Beautiful Creatures for instance. WD ruined, for me, the integrity of the other novel we read or maybe just the author, I don’t know. I just understand all the authors’ reasonings now-sure, I’ll always be excited at the prospect of the male POV of my favorite novels, but I won’t obsess and pine for it like I once did. I waited 5 months in anticipation for WD and it came up short-which I really never thought could possibly happen with this particular story. It depresses me. But I’ve learned my lesson-don’t push what isn’t there. Noted.