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A review by lillanaa
Mayhem by Estelle Laure
4.0
This book was received as an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
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!
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!