Is another shite novel.

I've been kinda slack with my bad novel reviews over the past few months, I must admit, and I've a bit of a backlog of them, including, but not limited to, a novel about persuading women to engage in BDSM under cover of a scientific experiment, a novel that manages to rip off both Twilight and Harry Potter simultaneously and is a sequel to one I've already endured, and a novel about a rapey ghost. But I digress. This is because I've been toying with moving over to a video series based upon it, but more because I've spent a lot of my time looking for a new job on account of I really don't want to spend much longer in Legal Aid, as working for same is like being in an abusive relationship.

Speaking of which... remember Beautiful Disaster and Wanking Disaster? Yes, that's right. Their author, one Jamie McGuire, has unleashed another waste of ink and pages on the world.

Executive Summary

Marry in Haste, Repent at Leisure: The Novel!

A bit more detail, if you don't mind?

Welp.

You may recall that I reviewed a horribad work named Beautiful Disaster ages ago. In it, a Mary Sue named Abby Abernathy gets together with a horrible abuser called Travis "Mad Dog" Maddox and by the power of her incorruptible pure pureness reforms him into the perfect love interest, despite him chasing her home from Las Vegas, smashing up her room in a fit of jealousy, and punching anyone who looks at him the wrong way, and all of which result in the novel coming over as being a little bit pro-domestic violence. And in the end, reader, she marries him, alas, and gets "Mrs Maddox" tattooed on herself.

Then there was Walking Disaster, or, should I say, Wanking Disaster. This was the same novel from the viewpoint of Travis. Trebles all round!

Then there's this. This isn't a sequel, more an expansion pack, if you will. It's the bits between Travis "Mad Dog" Maddox and Abby "Doormat" Abernathy eloping to Las Vegas to get hitched and her revealing her ill-advised marital body art. There's some mention as to how they're trying to do it just as an excuse to get away with being implicated in the big fire at the end of the previous novels but... yeah. So, we already know the outcome of all this. However that doesn't stop the book from containing some of the most ill-advised romantic entanglements ever committed to paper. And then excusing it by saying that it's okay because they're in WUV.

Well, Travis doesn't do anything too abusive overtly. However in the bits narrated from his viewpoint (it has switching POVs) there are various things that, shall we say, don't bode well. For instance, during the ceremony itself (which is performed with an Elvis Impersonator, though thankfully they don't play "Love Me Tender" on the organ when they're going back down the aisle) Travis bungs in an additional line about how "I promise to never enter another fight, drink in excess, gamble, or throw a punch in anger... and I'll never ever make you cry sad tears again."

Never has there been a more ominous wedding vow. You just want to grab Abby "Wet as an otter's pocket" Abernathy and enquire of her exactly why she's marrying someone who fights, drinks, gambles, and makes her cry sad tears. Yet... this enormous, hanging question never gets answered. Even when her friends (you may recall these had stupid names like Parker, America, and Shepley) tell her that she's being bloody stupid getting hitched in such a tearing hurry, she basically sticks her fingers in her ears and refuses to listen. Oh yes. And in another fit of horrible DV-excusing, Abby Abernathy says to Travis, IN THE CEREMONY, that she knows she's not easy to live with. Thus implying that he was entirely okay to act like the spoilt man-child he is, because Abby Abernathy kinda... deserves it.

(Excuse me, I think I just threw up in my mouth.)

But then again, it goes both ways, and Abby Abernathy really is as wet as... well, her quim just about every time she sees Travis Maddox. Constantly she insists on gushing (drum fill) about him, and how awesome he is and how she's in WUV with him. And he's still using "Pigeon" or "Pidge" as a pet name for her, apparently because pigeons mate for life and are smart and all that old bollox. No, they're still rats of the sky. It's wearing, frankly. Anyhow. There's the wedding, and then there's an obligatory consummation scene in the back of a limo. Classy! It's typical overwrought romance-novel sex, if you must know, all billowing and perfect mutual-climax nonsense and all that happy horseshit, when we both know that in reality, Travis Maddox probably can't keep the milk in the bucket for more than a few pushes, if you know what I mean. And then there's a flash forward to a year later in which they renew the vows and have a proper big party. You can tell that a fortress of fail is imminent when you notice that the chapter is called "Chapter Thirteen Fourteen." Yep. Apparently the author is a triskaidekaphobic. Oh dear. Or worse, she's so horribly in love with her own Mary Sue of a protagonist that she can't have a chapter 13 as the last one lest she curse her chance at happiness with Travis "Mad Dog" Maddox.

But none of the above is the main reason why I find this book so objectionable. The main reason is the sheer shamelessness of it. The sheer cynicism. The fact that this novel is basically made up of offcuts from the ends of Beautiful / Wanking Disaster, which have been mildly titivated, put in their own binding, and then sold to twihards for £7.99 a throw. Considering that I was able to obtain Joe Abercrombie's "Best Served Cold" for just £8.99, and that is eight times as long as this, and eight hundred thousand times better, it's a rip off as well. There is absolutely no good reason for this to exist for these reasons alone. Oh, and did I mention that they padded it out by adding a two-chapter preview from Jamie McGuire's non-connected novel "Red Hill" as well? So... yeah.

I honestly don't know what to do with this book. I'm tempted to flush it down the toilet but, I. it's a library book, and II. even though it's the same one that's swallowed all my splattery chilli-shites in the past without let or hindrance, it might just sick it back up again.

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