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(Review originally posted here at Fictionally Inclined.)

I have struggled with how to go about this review. I had pretty much planned on simply not reviewing if a book was anything less than “okay” for me. BUT. I have decided this book is an exception, if only because I, personally, felt incredibly misled about it. I want to do a review so others don't go into it expecting something else like I did. I saw a couple glowing reviews and the high Goodreads rating, read the summary, thought “Older young adult romance! They're actually in college! SCORE!” and marked it as to-read. Then I (eventually) read it. There are very few books I disliked so much by the end that I wanted to throw them across the room. This was one of them.

If you get nothing else from this review, get this: Beautiful Disaster is NOT a romance. I really want to stress this point. I have seen it portrayed as a twisted but passionate and beautiful love story. That's even how it tries to present itself. And trust me, I love a good twisted love story. You want romance? I can give you romance. I can give you Good Girl/Bad Boy romance. This book? Not romance. The “love story” in Beautiful Disaster is a hot mess of dysfunction, codependency, and psychological, emotional, and borderline physical abuse.

You may have noticed (especially if reading this on Goodreads) that I rated this book 2 stars. If I hated it so much, why not 1 star? Honestly, there were parts in the beginning that I did enjoy, before the red flags started popping up all over the place. And even with that, the story was interesting in its own way. I really think I would have enjoyed Beautiful Disaster a lot more if I had gone into it knowing what it actually was. Perhaps “enjoyed” is not quite the right word...maybe “appreciated.” I would have been in the right mindset. I wouldn't have felt tricked and cheated. I've read very good books about unhealthy relationships in the past (Stay by Deb Caletti and Dreamland by Sarah Dessen, among others). I would not put this among them, but I certainly could view it as a much better book if looking from the perspective of a cautionary tale about what to avoid in relationships, rather than a portrayal of a swoon-worthy romance for which you should long.

On the technical side, there were also quite a few grammatical mistakes; a more intense editing process was definitely needed before publishing.


❝The more he smiled, the more I wanted to hate him, and yet it was the very thing that made hating him impossible.❞

❝I had died and woken up in High School Musical.❞