Many thanks to NetGalley, St. Martin’s Press, Wednesday Books and the author for the advanced reader’s copy of Mayhem in exchange for my honest review.
- Title: Mayhem
- Author: Estelle Laure
- Publisher: Wednesday Books
- Pub. date: 14th July 2020
- Series: none
- Pages: 304
- Genre: young adult, historical fiction, magic realism, mystery
- Source: NetGalley
- Link:
The Lost Boys meets Wilder Girls in this supernatural feminist YA novel.
It’s 1987 and unfortunately it’s not all Madonna and cherry lip balm. Mayhem Brayburn has always known there was something off about her and her mother, Roxy. Maybe it has to do with Roxy’s constant physical pain, or maybe with Mayhem’s own irresistible pull to water. Either way, she knows they aren’t like everyone else.
But when May’s stepfather finally goes too far, Roxy and Mayhem flee to Santa Maria, California, the coastal beach town that holds the answers to all of Mayhem’s questions about who her mother is, her estranged family, and the mysteries of her own self. There she meets the kids who live with her aunt, and it opens the door to the magic that runs through the female lineage in her family, the very magic Mayhem is next in line to inherit and which will change her life for good.
But when she gets wrapped up in the search for the man who has been kidnapping girls from the beach, her life takes another dangerous turn and she is forced to face the price of vigilante justice and to ask herself whether revenge is worth the cost.
From the acclaimed author of This Raging Light and But Then I Came Back, Estelle Laure offers a riveting and complex story with magical elements about a family of women contending with what appears to be an irreversible destiny, taking control and saying when enough is enough.
Content warnings: domestic abuse (mentioned), drug abuse, child abuse (mentioned), sexual abuse (mentioned), murder
Mayhem was widely publicised as a “YA feminist mash up inspired by The Lost Boys and The Craft”, but I haven’t read or watched either of those, so I went into this book with a very blank slate. I was in love with the book cover because HOW GORGEOUS IS THAT!?!
The story is basically Mayhem and her mom, Roxy, running away from an abusive stepfather to Santa Maria, Roxy’s hometown. Mayhem meets her extended family (including her aunt’s adopted kids), and soon discovers a family secret that changes everything.
We have Mayhem Brayburn, the main character and narrator of the whole story. I wasn’t a huge fan of her because I felt she lacked depth as a character. There was more focus on her family history than actually herself and what makes her, her. Even her mom, Roxy, didn’t really catch my interest until around the 70% mark of the book, but I still found her more interesting than Mayhem herself. I’m still a bit confused about the story behind the aunt, Elle; she was more of a “fairy godmother” persona, which didn’t really make a lot of sense to me. The characters that really hooked my interest were Elle’s adopted kids: Jason, Neve, and Kidd. I loved Jason and Kidd as siblings: their dynamic was interesting and they had more personality than even Mayhem. Neve’s character had so much more potential, and I expected so much more from her, but her storyline sort of fell flat at the end.
Laure’s plot here was very interesting. The Brayburn heritage was full of mystery and magic, and I was really interested in figuring it all out along with Mayhem. At the end of the story, I was still not completely sure what the Brayburns are – Witches? Vampires? – but it was a very different take from the superhero version of vigilante justice. One plot point that I felt could have been executed better is the side-villain, the Sand Snatcher. Cool name and MO, but once again I felt like the storyline fell flat once again. Did we even really need this villain when we had the abusive stepfather on the loose? I liked the overall plotline, which was interesting, but maybe it was a bit too heavy for a standalone?
Although I enjoyed the process of finding out about the Brayburn family secret along with Mayhem, I feel that multiple POVs could have benefitted this story a lot more and made it way more interesting. Since Mayhem was confused and clueless for the majority of the book, so was I! Laure really nailed the secretive and mystical mood of the story, as well as a curious tone since we’re seeing everything through Mayhem’s eyes. But, I really think Mayhem would have done better with a little more focus on the characters rather than the story-building focus.
Mayhem tackled some heavy themes throughout, but the ones that really stood out to me were abuse and ‘murder versus justice’. Roxy’s journey throughout the book was coping in the aftermath of being in an abusive relationship and drug addiction. She went through stages of recovery that were very nicely depicted, but way too fast – the whole book was a bit too fast-paced, in all honesty. But I was also intrigued because Mayhem, being a third person, had already understood and anticipated all of Roxy’s stages of recovery. That was a nice little touch. The ‘murder versus justice’ discussion enters in the second half of the story. Not everyone in the story agreed on this debate, and everyone had their own view on it. That was a nice touch since it made it a bit more multifaceted rather than everyone agreeing on “yes, vigilante justice isn’t the same as murder”.
Overall, Mayhem had great potential, but the story went by way too fast and there wasn’t really much time to flesh out the characters and the plot. I enjoyed it but I might have loved it as a series with a good pace to the story.
