Beautiful Sacrifice - Review

Beautiful Sacrifice (The Maddox Brothers, # 3)

By: Jamie McGuire

Published: May 31st 2015 by Amazon Digital Services, Inc.

284 pages

Genre: New Adult, Contemporary

Source: Personal Kindle Library

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Goodreads description--Falyn Fairchild can walk away from anything. Having already left her car, her education, and even her parents, the daughter of the next governor of Colorado is back in her hometown, broke and waiting tables for the Bucksaw Café. After every shift, Falyn adds to her shoebox of cash, hoping to one day save enough to buy her a plane ticket to the only place she can find forgiveness: Eakins, Illinois.

The moment Taylor Maddox is seated in Falyn’s section at the Bucksaw, she knows he’s trouble. Taylor is charming, breaks promises, and gorgeous even when covered in filth—making him everything Falyn believes a hotshot firefighter to be. Falyn isn’t interested in becoming another statistic, and for a Maddox boy, a disinterested girl is the ultimate challenge.

Once Falyn learns where Taylor calls home, everything changes. In the end, Maddox persistence is met with Falyn’s talent for leaving, and for the first time, Taylor may be the one to get burned.

One of my favorite things about The Maddox Brothers series has been how each book has been so intertwined within the others. I love that little pieces of the puzzle fit in all over the place making one complete picture. However, this is also kind of a complaint. Because it seems highly unlikely that 4 brothers will find the love of their lives all around the same time period as each other. Along with a few other coincidences that are just too big to really be believable. It’s a little on the cheesy side. But hey…I like cheesy (up to a point).

Unlike the previous two books in the series, Beautiful Sacrifice was written from Falyn’s perspective entirely. I liked the change of pace, but if we end up getting a version of Beautiful Sacrifice but from Taylor’s perspective I might just scream. We briefly met Falyn in the previous books, but I didn’t really know much about her. Because of the interconnected nature of all the books in this series so far, I’m really going to have to go back and re-read them all once I have all of the pieces of the puzzle in place.

Falyn waits tables at a restaurant in Colorado. She came from a life of wealth but has turned her back on it all. She doesn’t want anything to do with her parents because of the past, and she doesn’t want anything to do with the life they tried to give her—the clothes, her car, a cellphone, ivy league college, becoming a doctor, table manners. No. She’s perfectly happy with thrift store buys, walking if need be, no cellphone, working at the restaurant that she happens to be renting a room above, and being rude and mean whenever she feels like it. Falyn has all the family she needs in the owners of the restaurant. They know her history, and they look out for her whenever they can. Needless to say, Falyn does NOT have time for a fling that’s just passing through.

Taylor now lives in Colorado working for the Forest Service working to put out forest fires. He works in one area of Colorado but often gets called to help out in other areas when needed. That’s how he meets Falyn. Despite being almost immediately interested in her and Falyn not wanting to give him the time of day, Taylor kind of tricks Falyn into going out with him as a means to get back at her parents. It just so happens that Taylor grew up in Eakins, Illinois…the one place where Falyn’s been saving her money to try to go.

Taylor and Falyn have a typical Maddox brother relationship. Feisty girl meets determined boy. They enter into a friendship type relationship because fiesty girl is adamant about not dating determined guy. But of course things can’t just stay platonic. And as is typical with these boys, when things get tough they respond with stupidity and alcohol rather than clear headedness. I felt like the biggest conflict between Falyn and Taylor was one of those too easy fixes, but I didn’t let that bother me too much. Also, while there is a large chunk of language in this book, I really appreciate Jamie McGuire keeping the sexual content to the level that she did. Events take place, but they aren't described in the detail that she’s been known to do in other books. I personally like my books a bit on the tame side.

Beautiful Sacrifice was better than I expected it to be and yet had a few coincidences that were really hard to believe. I love how the books in this series are all interconnected in ways that I’d never expect or imagine. And I can’t wait to go back and re-read the series once I know all of the facts. I can’t even imagine how Tyler and Ellison’s puzzle pieces are going to fit in. I wouldn’t assume that they would except for all of the previous books have so far. Even though language ran high, sexual content did not. I appreciate that. Beautiful Sacrifice gets 4 Stars from me. Have you read Beautiful Sacrifice? What did you think? Let me know!