What an interesting story! Told in a few different timelines and POVs, this story was fairly easy to follow and become engrossed.

Mayhem Blackburn is no ordinary girl, well none of the Blackburn girls are ordinary. Royalty to the citizens of Santa Maria, they hold onto a deep run, unspoken yet widely known secret.

This story is a great read with a bit of angst, trepidation, wonder, and love.

Give it a read!

When I read the title, I figured I had to read <i>Mayhem</i>. The definition of the word mayhem is the gruesome crime of deliberately causing an injury that permanently disfigures another. There was some pretty bad things happening in the book. Mayhem was subjected to abuse, as well as her mother. Her mother finally had enough and returned to her hometown, a town from which she ran away. Weird happening, family secrets, and murders of young girls, are included in this story. Like Eleanor Roosevelt once said "A woman is like a tea bag - you can't tell how strong she is until you put her in hot water". This book will be going into our classroom library.

3 stars. I liked that this one is a fun love letter to The Lost Boys. I love that movie, but the plot of this one wasn't always the most fascinating or gripping. I did enjoy the character exploration of trauma and overcoming it as well as finding oneself. It's a good magical realism, but it's not the best magical realism YA out there. Glad I read it. Review to come.

I think the author got lost in the The Lost Boys and tried to rewrite that. I’m very sorry, but I was not a fan of this book at. all. There’s not much I else I can say about this one. Thanks so much to the publisher for giving me access a copy of this book.

This was sold as ‘the lost boys meets wilder girls’ and that is my ideal book! This did not disappoint. This was beautifully written but beware of trigger warnings before reading.

I gave this a three out of five star. I enjoyed it but not a lot. It was a decent read. I liked the story but didn’t really love any of the characters. I thought this was going to be a new favorite book but it didn’t sadly.

This book was absolutely insane! I never thought that I would be so into a book this short and I had no idea what the book was about from the beginning. If you like thrillers where there is a child involved this is it! Trigger warning for: sexual abuse, rape, domestic violence, drug, and alcohol abuse though!

Enjoyed this book. Went in blind, not knowing much about it, other than I loved the cover and the title! Was easnatly surprised with how quickly I finished it. Writing flowed nicely.

Described as a YA feminist mashup inspired by the films The Lost Boys and The Craft, “Mayhem” had so much potential to be oh so good. Sadly, I found author Estelle Laure’s novel left me wanting more nostalgic inspiration and less almost exact retelling.

The plot reach much too familiar to me in relation to “The Lost Boys” including specific events, brother characters, locations, and even descriptions of the characters fashion sense”. Add this to a slower paced plot and some uneven style, I was left with a somewhat sour taste in mouth when finished.

I’ve never seen The Lost Boys, which this has been compared to. I know! Shocking, since I’m an 80’s kid. I have seen the craft though, and can’t say that I saw any similarities.

It has become a pet peeve of mine when a book is often compared to a movie or an original story/classic. It usually comes off as a rip off, bordering on plagiarism with just name & gender changes. Or it’s not even close to said movie/book, that you wonder why it was even compared in the first place. Having said that, it makes for a disappointing read.

I’m an impatient reader! Especially when it comes to supernatural stories and thrillers. I need them fast-paced and this wasn’t. But I did appreciate the creativity and writing style, and thought it was good overall.

The premise of this one was quite interesting, but it just didn't quite work for me.

This book deals with a lot, and weaves in a bit of magic to do so. Mayhem comes from an abusive step-father, and the story starts right after they've escaped back to her mother's hometown. However, this hometown has secrets, and the women in her family inherit a certain type of magic that they use to protect the town. Mayhem is wrapped into this magic, and learns how to use this magic alongside hearing rumors of a serial killer in the town.

One of my friends said that this book could have benefitted from being longer, and I have to agree. There were a lot of interesting parts of the story that simply didn't get enough time to grow, especially regarding the magic. The magic of this family is wrapped in so much history, and it feels like we're given a crash course in it, rather than really seeing the depth of this history and the hold it has on this family. I feel like the ending also didn't interrogate the role of this magic and family in the town as much as it could have, and leaves the morality of vigilante justice sort of up in the air, even though this discussion is started at a few separate points. Overall, if more time had been spent here, I could've found myself really enjoying this book.

Another issue that is common with magical realism is that it often can feel sudden and jarring, rather than blending seamlessly with the story. While there were some aspects of the magic that felt like it blended well with the rest of the story, the switch to having a story with magic was very sudden, and it took me a second to catch on to what was going on. It wasn't clear at first if there was actually some sort of magic involved or if these kids were just, insanely high on drugs.

Overall, this wasn't my thing, though I do wish I had enjoyed it because the concept itself was quite interesting.

Mayhem sucked me in right from the start and didn't let go. Mayhem and her mom are on the run from an abusive stepfather and they land at the family home in Santa Maria. Here Mayhem learns that she is not an ordinary teen. She comes from a long line of female witches that kill anyone that threatens their family. The story follows Mayhem's adjustment to this new normal. It was suspenseful and full of action. 4 stars. Thanks NetGalley for the eARC.

Beautifully written, fillled with emotions and the premise of a great journey! The feminist version of TheLost Boy. Although I loved what the author was trying to say with this story, I found some part a bit cringy,

I enjoyed the premise of this book but feel like it needs some tidying up. Everything happens a bit too fast, and supernatural things go on without much background or setting up. Too much blind acceptance of massive life changing events to be believable. Ok, it’s somewhat based in fantasy/magic but there wasn’t enough done to make me believe in the world of Mayhem.
I still enjoyed reading it and love the idea of this story, but I think it needs revising and elaborating on.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for letting me access an advance copy of this book in exchange for my feedback.

This book is set to the backdrop of 1987, which was refreshing. I think it was well-written, the pacing was a little slow but I liked the plot and the characters arcs. The cover is beautiful too, so I think I'll have to buy a physical copy!

It's not bad, but I quite honestly do not have the nostalgia for the 80s. That seems like a prerequisite for this book, especially considering the homage to The Lost Boys, all of which went right over my head. So if someone had an immense love for that particular movie and time period, absolutely they will love it.

Coming from someone with no point of reference to the apparent source material, I have to say I genuinely enjoyed this. Many of the other reviews pointed out that there seems to be a fine line between retelling and inspiration, but unfortunately I don't have the authority to make that judgement. Standing on its own, though, I absolutely loved this book. There's something about it that grabbed me from the start and it just kept going in a way that I had so much fun with. Lauren's voice for the characters is one that stuck with me, feeling so full and different from anything I've read recently.

The characters are probably the catching point for me, though. While Mayhem was awesome, and I loved Kidd, the rest of the characters seemed to try too hard to push a specific viewpoint. Jason was probably the most likeable to me out of the side characters, but the constant hammer from Elle, mixed with Roxy and Neve, the butting of heads was enough to make me find it annoying. I won't say they're terrible, it's just something I don't enjoy out of these kinds of books. There always has to be the moral quandary character and in some cases it gets a little too much.

That being said, though, I guess I'll have to go watch the movies this book is apparently similar to. I don't see why we can't have a few retellings here and there, and the author does reference them in her blurb, but we'll see. Maybe there'll be a sequel, maybe there won't be, I'd be intrigued to see one, honestly, because this has such a weird energy about it. It was fun!

I had to DNF this one. I didn’t enjoy the execution and it was so hard for me to pick it up between sittings. I’m sad that this book didn’t work for me.

This book was okay... I enjoyed the characters but I found the plot quite confusing and hard to follow at times. However, I do still think it is worth the read because it was quite unique and will leave the reader thinking.

Mayhem ended up being a DNF for me. Definitely a case of the book just wasn't for me, but I could see others liking it.