Hey hey hey, I slaughtered that July goal of reading one book-I’ve now completed more than one for July!
Goodreads Synopsis
Fiercely independent Camille “Cami” Camlin gladly moved on from her childhood before it was over. She has held down a job since before she could drive, and moved into her own apartment after her freshman year of college. Now tending bar at The Red Door, Cami doesn’t have time for much else besides work and classes, until a trip to see her boyfriend is cancelled, leaving her with a first weekend off in almost a year.
Trenton Maddox was the king of Eastern State University, dating co-eds before he even graduated high school. His friends wanted to be him, and women wanted to tame him, but after a tragic accident turned his world upside down, Trenton leaves campus to come to grips with the crushing guilt.
Eighteen months later, Trenton is living at home with his widower father, and works full-time at a local tattoo parlor to help with the bills. Just when he thinks his life is returning to normal, he notices Cami sitting alone at a table at The Red.
As the baby sister of four rowdy brothers, Cami believes she’ll have no problem keeping her new friendship with Trenton Maddox strictly platonic. But when a Maddox boy falls in love, he loves forever—even if she is the only reason their already broken family could fall apart.
What I Thought of Beautiful Oblivion
I received this book as a Klout Perk and wasn’t sure what I’d think about it since I’d not heard of it before, nor was I sure I was interested in a love story. However, I started and finished this book in less than 5 hours and then promptly logged into Goodreads from my phone and added some of the other books from Jamie McGuire to my To Read list and Wish list.
When I first started reading Beautiful Oblivion I was concerned that I would in no way relate to the main character Camille. The first few pages portray her as this tough bitchy girl who smokes and possibly gets into trouble in bars with her roommate to blow off steam. Luckily the storyline quickly turned around as it delves into her romantic troubles and hangups with her family, and she slowly becomes much more likable. However, the lead male character, Trenton, is instantly likable and pretty much wins you over entirely by his second appearance in the book despite the inner dialogue of Cami as she recounts his actions (they’ve known each other basically their entire lives) in her head and why she doesn’t like him at all.
When you read this book you quickly get pulled into this storyline and troubled relationships, and it’s easy to be sucked into the drama of it all. Jamie McGuire writes sexual tension and chemistry VERY well-it was really believable and nothing felt forced. The first near-sexual encounter had me worrying about that typical romance-novel-style wording (it’s kind of annoying when things get so flowered up-when you’re having sex with someone you’re not stopping to think about “the soft spot near your pelvis” or using the words “throbbing manhood” as so many romance novels do) however she kept it pretty simple and realistic, which I appreciate highly. There also wasn’t an over abundance of sex, which made for really great tension and build up when it finally happened. It also kept the book from being a trashy romance novel, and more of a romance novel with only a slight hint in one or two “scenes” of it. It ended up being a pretty nice balance.
My biggest criticism of this novel is the T.J. character and how there is supposedly some big secret about him-which only gets mentioned once or twice, except the main character has all of this guilt over it. It ends up feeling very flat most of the time, and you find yourself wondering if it’ll ever be addressed and if you even want it to-because it’s kind of annoying. The whole T.J. storyline just felt a bit flat-and it wasn’t until I realized there would likely be other books that I realized that character may be addressed later in the series… Maybe? I don’t know.
