Magic, Monsters, and Mayhem come together in the sequel to A Deadly Education. This is the second book in the trilogy and picks up immediately after the first one. El is now in her senior year and she is in for one hell of a ride. After barely making it through her junior year she is now prepping along with her friends their ultimate battle plan for dealing with the monsters as their graduation looms over them... but strange things have been occurring, and they have specifically been surrounding El. She is given a schedule that is almost impossible to work with and more monsters have been showing up to attack her while running away from her sort of boyfriend Orion, who is desperate to kill more monsters. In fact, it’s almost as if they school is coming after El, and wants something from her. Soon El and her friends find that their graduation plans are going to have to change and that things are about to get even more hectic as El resolves herself to save everyone and Orion is hellbent on killing every single monster. On top of this, El and Orion have to sort out what they want to do after graduation, specifically where they stand with one another.... and that ending. THAT ENDING HAD ME GASPING BECAUSE I NOW NEED THE NEXT BOOK IMMEDIATELY!!! I NEED TO KNOW HOW THIS ENDS AHHH. This book felt a bit slower for me compared to the intense atmosphere of the first book despite El being more at risk and having this be her graduate year. Maybe its due to the fact that she is now surrounded by more friends and has built an actual support system for herself in this book. I really loved Orion and El’s relationship growth and how they get to know each other more and go out of their way to care for the other despite El being a bit of a mean crank and Orion being a bit of a single goal orientated on just hunting monsters type of guy. They just work in a way that I like, overall this story did not go the way I had expected, especially with the whole graduation arc and what the school actually wanted from El in the end. Their game plan definitely was not something I was expecting after everything happened in the first book and I can’t wait to see how the third book wraps up everything!

*Thanks Netgalley and Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine for sending me an arc in exchange for an honest review*