Walking Disaster by Jamie McGuire

Narrated by Dan Bittner

The official blurb: Can you love someone too much?

Travis Maddox learned two things from his mother before she died: Love hard. Fight harder.

In Walking Disaster, the life of Travis is full of fast women, underground gambling, and violence. But just when he thinks he is invincible, Abby Abernathy brings him to his knees.

Every story has two sides. In Beautiful Disaster, Abby had her say. Now it’s time to see the story through Travis’s eyes.

Seeing Jamie McGuire’s Walking Disaster available for pre-order at Audible motivated me to listen to its prequel, Beautiful Disaster (see my review). I was intrigued and wanted to see how an author would go about delivering the same romance tale without it being boring or repetitive. Would she literally go from scene to scene repeating each one from the male perspective? The fact that I was swept up in Travis and Abby’s story in the first installment only heightened my desire to find out how this twist worked.

I found the twist worked well. I thoroughly enjoyed being inside Travis Maddox’s head in Walking Disaster though I could have done without the man whore moments early on – after that it was a great way to revisit the couple’s story. He’s a hero you fall for through only his actions and spoken words in Beautiful Disaster but, having already fallen, the opportunity to see things from his perspective and know what goes through his mind was too good to pass up.

Travis’ inner voice, along with every other voice to be found in this book, is perfectly performed by narrator Dan Bittner. He’s a new-to-me narrator whose skill level is off the charts. It’s immediately apparent that he gets the story he is narrating and doesn’t miss one chance to shade in every nuance in his portrayal of a bad boy’s fall into love, his struggle to make it work with his volatile personality, and the angst suffered as he and Abby make it to their eventual HEA. He not only delivered the basics I expect in a narration – clear character definition and pacing that adjusts to what is happening in the moment – but he also adds palpable emotion to match every cue written, be it choked back tears, happy laughter, total heartbreak, or sheer joy. I felt and reacted to them all just listening to his voice.

While all the pivotal events from the first book are included in Walking Disaster, we are also given an open window into Travis’ life outside of his bad boy image through his relationships with his father, brothers, and especially his cousin/roommate Sheply. Several times during Beautiful Disaster, it was implied that Travis was having deep conversations with Shep as he came to grips with the changes meeting Abby brought to his life. Being privy to those conversations in this book was like hitting a jackpot in getting to know and understand him. This insight also meant I didn’t leave this book feeling the relationship between Travis and Abby was the train wreck I thought it was in the first telling.

I also enjoyed skipping over large sections of the first book with simple references or thoughts that Travis had about them. The listener knows they happened and impacted the first story from Abby’s viewpoint but I had no desire to go over America and Sheply’s issues, Parker Hayes details or her near miss again, and I was particularly happy to have blacked out along with Travis during one early scene.

I am glad I put off listening to Beautiful Disaster until a week before Walking Disaster released as I still had Abby’s POV fresh in my mind, which meant I could be more patient with her reticence at times. With her past she, was more than justified in being wary and trying to protect herself – was she supposed to be a mind reader when those around her only threw out hints? Sheply didn’t hint with Travis – he called him out more than once and made him admit what he was feeling then pointed him in the right direction. America only hinted with Abby or smiled with an “I know best” look while things unfolded that left Abby baffled.

Yes – if I wanted to pick these stories apart by pointing out the abruptness with which important scenes come down with no reasonable explanation or that a portion of the storyline dragged out way too long without a solid basis (which impacted the heroine negatively), I could. But in the end I re-lived past memories and enjoyed going with the intended youthful drama and angst (instead of adult reality) which was enhanced all the more by excellent narrators.

Bringing me back to Dan Bittner in particular with Walking Disaster – my list of the best of the best narrators now has a new name on it. His delivery style equals listening nirvana.

Brenda

Narration: A+

Book Content: B+

Steam Factor: Tame – but glad I had my earbuds in

Violence: Fighting

Genre: New Adult

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Walking Disaster was provided by Simon and Schuster to AudioGals for review.