A review by eesh25
Miss Mayhem by Rachel Hawkins

3.0

2.5 Stars

It's been a few months since the Cotillion and things are almost back to normal. Yeah, Harper is still a Paladin, David still an Oracle, Ryan the new Mage and Bee still missing, but no one's trying to kill them and the Ephors have backed off, so things are good. Until the "backed off" Ephors come back and claim they want to train David and that Harper has to go through some, potentially, deadly tests to truly become a Paladin.

Now in my review of the last book, I said that one of the reasons I was going to read the sequel was that the book wasn't annoying. The same cannot be said for Miss Mayhem.

In fact, for the first half of the book, I was so thoroughly irritated that almost stopped reading. But then I read the last chapter and decided it would be worth it. But even if I hadn't read the ending, the book got better sometime after the first half was done. It became more interesting, less annoying and less full of superficial stuff (though that didn't entirely go away). And, like I said, the ending was good.

The main reason the first half bothered me, other than the talk about pageants and the fluff and all that crap, was Harper. I really didn't like her.

She was a self-important , inconsiderate, control-freak with a severe lack of empathy and I hated her. Ryan never had much of a personality to begin with, Bee was simply an attempt at putting friendship in the book and Harper squashed David's personality, so we only has her, which made me hate her more.

The hate was somehow reduced afterwards but I'm nowhere near liking her. Maybe the third book will help. Yes, I'm reading the third one. These books are short, easy to read, and I'm curious.

Okay... what else is there to talk about? Oh yeah, the plot. There wasn't much to it. Very weak and not even important. Has zero relevance to the series as a whole. It was just there because you can't have a book without at least some plot.

Overall, this was a bridge-book, and not a very good one at that. I'm giving it the same rating as the first one but the that one was better. Let's hope I have more luck with the third and final book.