Riot (Mayhem, #2)

4.5 Rocking Stars

Another great story in the Mayhem series.

Dee Dawson doesn’t do relationships. When her mother took off and left her and her father when she was eleven she watched her father break apart. Now as an adult Dee refuses to give anyone power to break her. Dee is crazy, wild and has a healthy appetite for sex but draws the line there so she is always in control. So when Dee meets Joel the sexy mohawked bass guitarist from the band The Last Ones To Know, she does what she always does. She tries her hardest to make him want her and only her. But Joel isn’t playing her games. They have hooked up a million times and the sex is amazing, but Joel does what he wants when he wants and this makes Dee crazy. “I’ve never wanted a boy to like me so badly in my entire life. I don’t even want Joel to just like me – I want him to worship the ground I walk on and throw himself at my feet. I want him to beg me to be with him and then cry his eyes out when I tell him I’m not a relationship kind of girl.” Watching Joel hook up with groupies and act indifferent to her one minute and then want her the next infuriates Dee like nothing else. She tries to make him jealous in more ways than one to no avail. Then Dee takes things too far by trying to make him jealous with the wrong person. Thankfully Joel shows up just in time before the situation could have turned tragic, but Dee gets a big wakeup call to the way she has been living her life. After coming to her rescue Joel has been ever present in Dee’s life and she assumes it’s because he pity’s her so she tries to push him away, but he isn’t having it. “I don’t need you to be my knight in shining f*cking armor.” “Good, because I’m not your Prince f*cking Charming. I’m just a guy who f*cking cares about you, and I’m going to keep caring about you whether you want me to or not.” Dee is convinced that Joel doesn’t really care about her, that he just feels bad for her. But the more time they spend together the more it seems like they are in a relationship even though they both agree that they are not. Joel made it clear that he doesn’t want her sleeping with anyone else. And Dee doesn’t correct people when they say that she is Joel’s girl. She is trying to deny her growing feelings for him. She knows he will hurt her. She knows it will never work so she keeps her walls firmly in place and is naïve to the fact that Joel has slowly but surely started breaking them down. “Every moment I spend with him now feels like holding my hand in the fire and liking it. The longer I stay in the flames, the more it will hurt later, but for now, we’re burning. And I like it too much to step away.” When Joel reveals his true feelings and intentions any normal girl would have swooned and jumped for joy. But Dee is not a normal girl and her reaction is the exact opposite of joy. She panics. She doesn’t believe he could really love her. She knows he will leave and devastate her down the line. He is a free spirit. Joel is angry and in disbelief to her reaction and he tries his hardest to convince her he is being genuine. “You’re right, I don’t know anything. I only know that I’m in love with you. Like seriously f*ucking in love with you.” It isn’t until she ends things with Joel that she realizes how much she truly loved him. He made her happy. She was just a coward and now she lost him for good. When she makes a plan to gather her courage and tell him how she feels she realizes he has moved on. Devastated, Dee makes the decision to make some changes in her life, changes that could mean moving away from her school, friends and most of all Joel. Is it too late or does she still have a chance to be happy with the only man to ever hold her heart? “The closest I ever came to happiness was when I was on the receiving end of his smiles, his kisses, his secrets. When we held hands and made each other laugh. When he loved me.” Riot is book two in the Mayhem series by Jamie Shaw. I am really enjoying this series so far! Joel and Dee’s story is full of angst, heartache, humor and a whole lot of steam. Dee is scarred by her mother’s abandonment of her and her father. She refuses to let her guard down and uses sex as a weapon so she can feel like she holds all the power. Joel has his own demons from his childhood that make him feel like he doesn’t belong anywhere and reluctant to put down roots. When these two get together the chemistry is crazy hot but they both want to have the power over one another that the other does not want to relinquish. It isn’t until the incident on the tour bus that Joel wakes up and realizes he wants a lot more from Dee. The problem is admitting this to to himself and convincing Dee of this. She puts up a good fight, but Joel is kind of hard to resist. The spikey haired hard ass rocker actually is quite a sweetheart. I loved him I loved this story, loved the ending and I can’t wait for the next in this series. If you read the first book, which I highly suggest you do, you will be happy to see the rest of the gang from Mayhem return. Rowan, Adam and the rest of the band are all in this book and we even get a sneak peek into the next book in the series, Chaos, featuring Shawn!

#rockstar #review #ya #badboy #45stars