Miss Mayhem - Rachel Hawkins

Miss Mayhem – Rachel Hawkins

Miss Mayhem is book 2 in the Rebel Belle series, to which I absolutely adored the first book. Miss Mayhem was still good and enjoyable, however I feel it was slightly lacking that humour and direction that was in the first book.

‘Life is almost back to normal for Harper Price. The Ephors have been silent after their deadly attack at Cotillion months ago, and best friend Bee has returned after a mysterious disappearance. Now Harper can return her focus to the important things in life: school, canoodling with David, her nemesis-turned-ward-slash-boyfie, and even competing in the Miss Pine Grove pageant.

Unfortunately, supernatural chores are never done. The Ephors have decided they’d rather train David than kill him. The catch: Harper has to come along for the ride, but she can’t stay David’s Paladin unless she undergoes an ancient trial that will either kill her . . . or connect her to David for life.’

Miss Mayhem follows on from book 1 in the series, and the aftermath of the cotillion and Blyth’s ritual. Things are starting to get back to normal, well as normal as things possibly can be for a Mage, Paladin and Oracle in high school. We see the struggles Harper faces as she juggles yet more responsibility, and the strain being put on her and David’s relationship. All made even worse by the bombshell that Harper has to take part in something called Peirasmos, a trial that had to be taken in order to truly be a paladin, a trial to which, failure meant death.

There are highlights and low lights in this book for me. The highlights being that of the relationships, the friendship between Bee and Harper, remaining strong, even when hitting a few bumps in the road (well maybe pot holes would be the case for some incidents) The relationship between Ryan and Harper, who are slowly trying to rebuild their friendship after everything that happened in the last book, and the same with Harper and David, from enemies to ‘boyfie and girlfie’ Hawkins really knows how to create brilliant relationships and dynamics in this story. Especially the further developed and covered relationship of that of Harper and her aunts, in particular Aunt Jewel. You could really tell Harper is a well loved character throughout this story.

Some of the low lights in this was firstly the length of this story, it is far shorter than I thought it would be, it felt a little too rushed and compact at the same time, like the story went really fast, but it also took a long time to get anywhere. I didn’t really know where this story was going and I feel like the direction of it seemed uncertain throughout. I also missed the humour and sass that was in the first novel. It was still very buffy esque, but Harpers humour seemed nonexistent throughout the story, and it was greatly missed as it was one of the more enjoyable bits of the previous story.

I cannot believe how this story ended, it seemed so final and yet not final at all, as you are left hanging with no idea what is happening, or what will happen next. I have no idea when the next book it due for release, I am assuming a year from now, which will be a struggle to wait to find out what will happen, to Harper, David, the Ephors and what of their powers? I cannot believe Rachel Hawkins left us hanging like that and i cannot wait to read the next book to find out.

I would say if you enjoy a quick easy read, like Buffy, the supernatural and a kick ass protagonist, then this series is for you and I only hope that humour will be back for the third book in the series.

I have given this 3 out of 5 stars.