Matthew and I are going to try to put summaries at the start of these…but I haven’t no idea what’s happening in this book. Fayln and Taylor aren’t going to be friends/lovers, but are now friends. He did laundry at her place. Falyn hates her parents. She is obsessed with Taylor’s hometown of Eakins, Illinois for ~mysterious~ reasons.
Beautiful Sacrifice Chapter 7:
Falyn can’t pay for her water bill, so she uses the bathroom downstairs in the restaurant. I feel like it can’t possibly be that important for her to get to Eakins if she can’t pay her water bill and if all she has in her fridge is “moldy jar of cheese dip, ketchup, and two cans of red bull”. Girl, splash out on some non-moldy cheese.
It turns out that Falyn using the restaurant’s bathroom is just a ploy to get Taylor back in the story. He’s outside waiting for her! Was he going to come in or just stand out there until she showed up?
Taylor asks her to hang out, and she says yes. I find it really odd that she’s just ready to go with him right away. I find these next bits even odder:
“Just don’t do anything stupid, like open my car door.”
“Do I look like that kind of guy to you?”
“No, but you don’t look like the kind of guy who makes friends with girls either, and it feels like I’ve got the job.”
He pulled me along, looking both ways before crossing the street. “What can I say? You’re the opposite of my better half.”
Is it just me who feels like either McGuire is just phoning it in at this point? I feel like she’s written this antagonistic dynamic so many times that she just had absolutely no inspiration left whatsoever. None of this really makes any sense. Their dynamic is inexplicable to me at this point.
Even more inexplicable? Taylor tells Falyn to drive his car. Falyn is nervous because she hasn’t driven in years, and I just…would asks someone else they barely know to drive their car?
“Do you even have a license?” he asked.
I have no idea why he didn’t ask her this first, or why he doesn’t seem at all concerned that her “hands are trembling.”
A car appeared and honked, and I slammed on the brakes.
Taylor looked at me, his eyebrows shooting up almost to his hairline.
So then Taylor takes back over. No, I have no idea why this scene was in here. It was weird and stupid.
He unfastened his seat belt. “You’d better just tell me where I’m going. I’ll learn to live with directions from a girl. We can reintroduce you to the road another day.”
We have wasted half a chapter on who is going to drive this car. You know what? I’ll drive.
After jogging around to the driver’s side, he climbed up and settled in. “I feel better about this,” he said, nodding.
I agreed, “Me, too.”
I disagree strongly.
They go for a hike, and Falyn tries to casually get information from Taylor without him knowing that’s what she’s doing. It’s unclear exactly what she’s sniffing around for about Eakins specifically because Taylor is just like, “It’s a boring place?” It sounds like at this point she could just Google the town and find out as much information.
During this talk, Fayln announces to us that Taylor is “too sweet, somewhat courteous, and even thoughtful at times, all safely hidden away behind his smart mouth and his tough tattooed exterior.” Have I been asleep this whole book? Does Taylor even have a personality? Falyn promises not to fall in love with him, which I know is obviously a promise that will never be kept, but it seems like it should be easy.
As they head back to the car, they happen to pass by a huge fundraiser that Falyn’s parents are attending. Whoops? Somehow, they immediately spot Falyn and run over to harass her.
People were beginning to crowd around my parents, like a small army of judgmental assholes…
It’s been an honor to meet The Rich People Without Netflix.
…“you remember Taylor Maddox. He’s from Eakins, Illinois.”
William blanched.
1) William is her dad. It’s very confusion that she calls him dad when she speaks but William in her head.
2) Yes, Taylor is now aware that Falyn is weirdly interested in his hometown.
Okay, I’m actually super excited that we’re only 34% of the way through the story and Taylor is like, “Why are you so interested in where I’m from?” But it gets increasingly confusing.
“Falyn,” he said, hesitation in his voice, “why do they care that I’m from Eakins?”
“Because they don’t want me anywhere near there.”
“Why not?”
“Because I could cause a lot of trouble for a lot of people if I go there.”
[…]
He was staring straight ahead into the darkness. “Did you know I was from Eakins when we met?”
“No.”
“Does it have to do with the fire?”
“Does what have to do with what fire?”
He turned to me, glaring. “Are you fucking with me, Falyn? Who are you?”
I wrinkled my nose. “What fire? What are you talking about?”
I am so confused. This is fantastic, and it just gets better.
He faced forward again. “Do you know Trex?”
“The guy who came with you to the café the first time?”
More Trex, please! Do you guys think he’s some sort of P.I. sent to investigate something about the fire from Beautiful/Walking Disaster? I have no idea what they’d want from Taylor, though, considering he wasn’t really in those books at all? Why does Taylor seem to think that Trex and Falyn are involved in some Eakins related conspiracy? Why are there so many Eakins related conspiracies? How did Falyn’s parents time their entrance so perfectly and are they also involved in the conspiracy?
When he was doing laundry at her place, was it in her apartment or the laundry room? Just wondering how they pulled this off if she can’t afford water.
Maybe she played washing machine noises on her phone to throw him off and he was too dumb to realize that his clothes were still dirty?
Wait a second. Wait a g-ddamn second.
Here are some things we know about Jamie McGuire:
– She is very invested in tying up every single possible narrative thread no matter how insignificant [evidence: this series is still happening].
– She is willing to go to absurd nonsense bullshit lengths to achieve this goal.
Falyn clearly has some sort of driving-related trauma. Trenton Maddox (remember Trenton? I wish I didn’t) had a girlfriend who died in a car accident where she was the driver.
Now look, I’m not saying Falyn is Trenton’s girlfriend who faked her death and changed her name—although if that does turn out to be the case I won’t be wholly surprised—but I can’t help but think there has to be some connection here. There’s already all kinds of ridiculous secret agent/crime shit going on in the background of these books. This is a stretch, but not a huge stretch.
Alternatively, I’ve become some sort of Jamie McGuire conspiracy theorist, which is probably worse.