A Beautiful Funeral: Book Review (The Maddox Brothers #5)

I already had a feeling because it had been hinted at in the previous books, but I still was sad when it did happen.

Hello, everyone! Welcome to the end of the binge-read! ⭐

I finished reading all books in The Maddox Brothers series, though, it is not the end. This is only the so-far books that are published because it looks like a new one will be published about Trenton, is it confirmed? I don’t know, but it is in on Goodreads, so it might be.

I also skipped over Something Beautiful and went directly to the last one: A Beautiful Funeral because I had to.

Basically, book 4 Beautiful Burn and this one are a mix in my head, but they are very distinctly different, never fear about that.

What I cannot get over is the fact of how much of a giant Travis is, I really need to re-read Beautiful Disaster because I remember the essence of it, but a lot of little details are missing from my memories. I read it a long time ago.

Anyway, I am remembering all of the books because A Beautiful Funeral, it is basically all the books in one without repetition. I mean that all brothers are in here, and their girls. So be prepared for that.

Alright, alright. I’ll do the book review now.

About the Book

Book series: The Maddox Brothers #5

Book Title: A Beautiful Funeral

Author: Jamie McGuire

Genres: Drama. New Adult (?). Fiction. Sad. Police.

Those genres I’m just making them up, but they are the themes of the book.

Year published: 2016

Page count: 240 (Kindle)

238 pages on Paperback.

4.5⭐ (5 on Goodreads)

I was not going to do spoilers, and this might be more frustrating than anything because I won’t say it fully, but poor kid was just standing in the way; like she had nothing to do with the whole scene and she didn’t even know who her real mother was that’s just crazy.

I hope you read my other reviews for this series, or you have read the books because the description alone gives away most of the series and what has been happening in it:

Losing has never been easy for a Maddox, but death always wins.

Eleven years to the day after eloping in Vegas with Abby, Special Agent Travis Maddox delivers his own brand of vigilante justice to mob boss Benny Carlisi. Vegas’s oldest and most violent crime family is now preparing for vengeance, and the entire Maddox family is a target.

The secret Thomas and Travis have kept for a decade will be revealed to the rest of the family, and for the first time the Maddoxes will be at odds. While none of them are strangers to loss, the family has grown, and the risk is higher than ever. With brothers against brothers and wives taking sides, each member will make a choice—let the fear tear them apart, or make them stronger.

I didn’t read the book description before reading the book because the title was a big giveaway. Obviously, someone was going to die.

Now, what surprised me the most was that each chapter was one of the characters from the previous books, starting with Thomas and basically going in age order. So, Thomas, Liis, Taylor, Falyn, Tyler, Ellie, Trenton, Camille, Travis, and Abby. Oh, sorry, America and Shepley, too. For some reason, I liked reading their chapters better than the others, which in turn made me regret not reading their part of the story before, but I already knew they were together so I didn’t feel like knowing what else was there, now I want to.

Whatever, going back to A Beautiful Funeral. While it was a bit confusing going from one character to the next, and honestly, Tyler, Thomas, and America, made me go: wait, who’s chapter is this again? I still was impressed by Jamie McGuire for doing all of that.

It is 10 years later in the Maddoxes universe, they are all grown, married and with children (most of them), and there are still problems in their relationships. It was harsh to read some of those chapters, and made me a bit more into it and open towards what happened in the previous books. Despite me not feeling it all, in the end my perspective changed for most of them.

Like, before, I liked Camille and Trenton’s story better, but by this book I was ready to shake Camille because she was being a bit, a lot, annoying. Falyn and Ellie also shifted slightly in my view, veering towards: ok ok, I get you.

As for the brothers, I still think that Trenton was right and he is top for me, fighting with Thomas for the first spot, if I had to pick one out of the five, those two and Travis surprisingly was third. Tyler and last Taylor. Just in case you wanted to know.

More about A Beautiful Funeral

A Beautiful Funeral is full of lies, tricks, drama, family fighting, in-laws discovering which side they would take, realising how overprotective they all are. Rethinking their choices. It is a big mix of things, but the book itself is basically tying up loose ends, there is no other way of looking at it.

There is no romance, no big story of one person in specific, it’s just about the Maddoxes and how their lives went and ended, where they headed, who they married, and what their careers were like. I’m not saying any of this is bad, I’m only saying what the book is like.

Of course, there is the main plot. The fact that they were all being targeted by the mafia and any one of them could die (and did) but that’s a bit on the side and a way of wrapping things up.

A bit winded here.

Continuing on? Not really, I think I made my point.

Of course I recommend it there is no doubt about it. But I also think that it is important to read the description of not only A Beautiful Funeral but the other Maddox Brothers books, and if you liked Beautiful Disaster (Travis’ story) then I’m sure you will love these ones as well, BUT, don’t expect him to be all over, and you might need to read that book first before this series since they talk a lot about what happened there. At times, I was a bit lost because it has been so long since I read it, but I got the gist of it since I knew where Travis and Abby stand and how their story was.

So, have you read these? I assumed yes, but maybe you wanted spoilers about everything Maddox related, I get it. I mean I don’t, I don’t like spoilers, but I get that some people do like that. Rambling. 😆

I’ll stop now.

That is all for this one, thank you for sticking with me to the end and for binge-reading all the books and reviews with me as I got through them.

I’m still missing a couple of side stories but those can wait for me. That’s really it, let me know if you have read these books or will in the future.

Happy reading! 📚