Beautiful Redemption by Jamie McGuireMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
Ah, the continuing saga of the Maddox brothers. They are a lively bunch.
In this second installment of the companion series to Beautiful Disaster and Walking Disaster, we meet Thomas Maddox. He's the eldest brother living a secret life as an FBI agent in San Diego. The family thinks he's "in marketing" in California. He's an angry man, using his anger to cover his personal issues and essentially taking everything out on the world in general and his coworkers in particular.
Liis is a woman who's good at her job because she fails at pretty much everything else. She can be a nominally good friend, but she's a terrible girlfriend and has an ex-fiance to prove it. She's running away from that relationship in Chicago to the great weather of San Diego and the chance to move up the FBI ladder.
The plot is surprisingly realistic on many levels. There's angst, jealousy, angst, grief, angst, arguing, angst. Thomas' relationship with Liis runs the gamut, common for a story in this series. There are a lot of ridiculous scenes in the office which, while providing some great entertainment, make me worry for the FBI if they're even slightly similar to the way the FBI really runs. Liis is half-Asian, a nice nod from McGuire to some diversity in her characters.
I liked this story a lot; I like the series in general and this book in particular was markedly better than the last. What made this one just slightly above average for me were the contradiction in the main characters. Thomas is supposed to be a real jerk, but almost instantly he's a damaged soul with tons of baggage. That would have been fine if it had been a slower reveal. Liis was the more believable character in terms of development.
The secondary characters are highly entertaining. McGuire is great at inventing friends and co-workers with their own problems and perspectives, always complementing the main characters but remaining just interesting enough to make the whole thing enjoyable. Their enhancement to the plot really helped it along in places where it flagged.
McGuire self-published this book, which is interesting when considering the quality as compared to the previous book Beautiful Oblivion. I wonder if she had more creative control and less of a deadline, giving her a better opportunity to really build the story well. She's a great writer either way - but for me, this book was certainly better than the last.
Currently the book isn't available on audio. However, this will probably change as McGuire has been faithful to her audio listeners. I just hope she gets good narrators who will do the characters justice. They could knock this story up in to way-above-average territory.
All in all this was a good read in dependable Jamie McGuire fashion. She's a go-to author for me because of her honesty and grit in storytelling. She's created quite a family of Maddox brothers with this series. They're the kind of guys you wish you knew in real life, so hearing about the next one is a treat to anticipate.
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