Mayhem

by Estelle Laure

• ISBN10: 1250297931
• ISBN13: 9781250297938
• Publish Date: 14 July 2020
• Publish Status: Out of Stock
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: St Martin's Press
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 304
• Language: English

Reviews

[Inkslinger]

ARC provided by St. Martin's Press/Wednesday Books and Estelle Laure. All opinions are mine and freely given.

Blog | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | BookBub

"I can't look at Elle after what she did, and if I have to fight this battle, cleanse my Brayburn blood, I have to do it away from here, where I can't hear the water whisper, where I can't feel it's pull on my heart, nevermind my body."

07-17: 'Mayhem' by Estelle Laure is credited as being The Lost Boys meets Wilder girls in a supernatural feminist YA novel.

Now.. I haven't read Wilder Girls, it's on my neverending TBR list, but I have loved The Lost Boys since it was released back in 1987, which is also the year 'Mayhem' takes place. It was the summer between junior high and high school for me and I was wildly into music.. pretty boys and girls.. and parties already. Most of my friends were in bands.. or chasing the enchanting characters in the bands.. and I was on the cusp of realizing I would work in and around the entertainment industry for my whole life. In fact, that moment was just a couple short months and one journalism teacher away.

Already, I was enamored with horror and vampires.. but pretty vampires in horror were the quintessential for me. Then along came this film that shook my world. There was a tale to be told, faces I'd never seen before and immediately fell for, and the temptation of mortality. The great moral dilemma.

As fondly as I remember the film, when I read the synopsis for 'Mayhem,' I knew I had to read it.


"He and Roxy met at a bonfire. He was dancing like he was part of the fire."

"He was her true love. That, she knew from the first night they met, from the way he ran at the ocean like he was picking a fight.."


The story centers around Mayhem Brayburn, a girl who along with her mother Roxy, are on the run from a tyrannical stepfather/husband. After years of his abuse, he finally goes too far and her mother takes her and escapes toward her childhood home.

Santa Maria, California may hold all the family secrets that Mayhem has never been able to reach through Roxy, but that's all about to change. There, she meets her aunt Elle's new family, begins to discover what it really means to be a Brayburn, and why her mother remained resolute in avoiding the ancestral place for so many years.

What I love about this story is that despite Roxy's struggling hold on her will and Mayhem's festering anger and frustration, there is a uniquely beautiful mother-daughter connection between them. These women have been through hell already. The result is a sense of fragility about Roxy that Mayhem is desperate to protect. Even in the early moments of the book, her main focus is not herself. It's her mother's safety and state of mind.

Though there are tensions between Roxy and Elle, deep down the theme is the same. Love, family, and loyalty. Women who either are strong.. or trying to remember how to be.. standing together. Not tearing each other down.


"Everything comes with a price. Every victory has a trail of blood behind it. Maybe the sorrow I am dragging behind me means a victory is coming my way."


Elle's kids.. are something akin to Max's boys.. but the dynamic is very different.. and the grip Santa Maria holds on them is not what we knew of Santa Clara either. Honestly, few people in Santa Maria are exactly as they seem and there were times Laure had me guessing at things that I would only change my mind about a few pages later. I will say I didn't get nearly enough of Jason. There's a deep well of character there, you can see it in all the quiet glances and soft words. We get glimpses of it and I loved them, but I feel like it could have been a much richer experience for me.

Another interesting approach Laure took was a narrative shift between Mayhem and entries in a journal passed through the hands of Brayburn women that came before her. Heartfelt writings detailing their loves and losses along the way. Tragic decisions that led to unforeseen outcomes for many of them.. and make no mistake, there are some reckonings coming. The question is how it will all play out in the end.


"You know," she says finally, "you don't get over things like losing your one and only. You just learn to live around the loss."


I had seen another reviewer state that this book was no good. That it was just The Lost Boys flipped and basically copied directly. The idea crushed me because that's not what I got from the summary and obviously it's never what you want from a retelling. You want to see a story from a new perspective, not just a shift in the individual telling it. But they were wrong. Since I knew that was their opinion going in, I even went back and rewatched the film to make sure everything was still fresh in my mind when I got about halfway through the book.

Sure, there are a few moments here and there. The Frog brothers do indeed appear and they maintain the personalities we know, but they really just offer a sense of familiarity. There is a quote near the end of the book that is directly taken from the film, but the references are used sparingly. Locations like the cliffs, some atmospheric similarities.. those appear as well, but more like landmarks orienting you to where you are in the story.. tethering you between the two tellings.. and holding you suspended in a state that is like a memory that never was.

I can't say enough good things about this story. Give it a chance, you'll be so glad you picked it up.

PURCHASE LINKS: AMAZON | BARNES & NOBLE | BOOKSAMILLION | BOOKDEPOSITORY.COM | GOOGLEPLAY BOOKS | KOBO

-----------

07-16: Finished, wow.. can't wait to share my thoughts. Review to come!

07-13: Okay, I'm about halfway through the book and I'm really enjoying it. I'm not seeing the same things I've heard about it yet.. like how it's an exact copy of the source. I'm seeing some things that have been brought across.. but the story itself is already wildly divergent.

07-12: I'm eagerly starting this today for a blog tour this Tuesday! I have strong hopes for it.. though I've seen some uncertain reactions to it..

[shannonmiz]

You can find the full review and all the fancy and/or randomness that accompanies it at It Starts at Midnight

This book was quite a unique take on contemporary fantasy. I enjoyed it aside from a few minor qualms, so why don't we break it down into what I loved versus what worked a bit less for me, yeah?

What I Loved:

• ►Such a focus on family and friendships! I loved how much the book centered on Mayhem's family. We know Mayhem's mother loves her quite a bit, but she's deep into fighting her own major demons, including an abusive husband (and stepfather of Mayhem) that they've just escaped from. They flee to Mayhem's aunt's home, which is also their childhood home, and Mayhem gets to learn a lot of stuff about her family for the first time. Her aunt also has kids she's taken under her wing who immediately become part of Mayhem's new circle of people. It's great to watch all these relationships blossom and change and grow.



• ►Always here for an '80s setting. Mayhem pulls out a Kissing Kooler at one point. A Kissing. Kooler. I lived and died by those things, I won't lie. (Apparently, according to the search I did above, you can still buy them on eBay. I do not recommend this, as we're talking 30 year old makeup, but you do you.) Anyway, I think the author did a great job using the beach/ocean backdrop with the nostalgic era, too. For whatever reason, mysteries set pre-cell phone era gives me the extra willies and I like it.



• ►It deals with some pretty heavy subject matter. The author has put a note in the final copy of the book (including some content warning), and you can find it here. But we know there is abuse from Mayhem's stepfather out of the gate, but the mystery that Mayhem finds herself a part of also includes some pretty heinous crimes. But I liked the way that some of the choices that Mayhem and the others had to make fell into a very gray moral area, and Mayhem really had to decide how she wanted to use the power she'd inherited.



• ►I didn't have trouble figuring out the magic.  I mean, it isn't explored super in-depth, but I think that is purposeful. Like, it doesn't really matter where it came from because it's here and now Mayhem needs to decide how she wants to use it. I also liked that it's a female familial connection, and we even get glimpses of journal entries from her ancestors describing how they handled the realization that they possessed magic.

What I Didn't:

• ►The pacing felt a bit off to me. Parts of it, especially the first half, felt a little draggy to me, but then by the end I had felt like perhaps some of the resolution was a bit rushed. Not a dealbreaker, but worth noting, especially if you get irked by slower pacing.



• ►This is maybe a little spoilery, so I am going to do some tags, but I'll say it's a bit of a character complaint. The way the magic worked, it seemed like an "easy" way for characters to do things that were totally out of character. It was hard then to tell who the characters, especially the secondary ones, really were at their core. What was them versus what was magic affecting them.

Bottom Line: Super atmospheric and wonderfully mysterious, I was pulled into Mayhem's world of family and magic.