Title: Beautiful Disaster Author: Jamie McGuire Publisher: Simon & Schuster, Inc. Contemporary fiction/ Coming of Age The characters in Beautiful Disaster are older teens, but I’m glad the publisher has marked this as adult (at least at Netgally where I got it from), because of the unnecessary emphasis on smoking, drinking, sex and violence. I’m cool with all that when it’s not over done, but not when the most action that happens is the characters getting drunk and throwing up. Unfortunately, however, teens are reading this book and it glorifies violence as a way of solving problems. This is contemporary fiction, not fantasy, so the violence is real. The hero is a guy who pummels people as his way of coping with his emotions. I’m not into censorship, but I am into responsible publication, and this story is a socially irresponsible publication for teen readers. It would have been nice to see the girlfriend at least not like Travis’s violence! But, no, she just accepted it as a … [Read more...]