The prequel to Maggie Rawdon’s new Queen City Chaos series is here! I highly recommend reading all of her books (at least her Plays & Penalties series and Seattle Phantom series) first, because characters from those series — including her younger brother Easton and her older brother Tobias — appear in this one. Definitely read the prequel, “Before the Chaos” right before reading this one, because who doesn’t want more of Madison and Quentin?!
What is Before the Chaos by Maggie Rawdon about?
I have two goals when I head up to the mountain house with my older brother and his friends: get his best friend Xander to see me as something more than my brother’s little sister and lose my V-card before I leave on gap year. The more those two goals align, the better.
So when I end up stuck sharing a room with the wrong best friend, I use it to my advantage. After all, who better to give me the tips and tricks I need?
But after a few late nights, I’m forgetting the list I made and realizing that even the best laid plans can end up in chaos. Especially when the wrong guy starts feeling like the right one…
Before the Chaos is the novella length prequel to Madison & Quentin’s full length story in Rival Hearts.
Rating: 4/5 Stars
Review:
I really loved this prequel. The reason that I gave it 4 starts instead of 5 comes down to two things (spoilers ahead, people) — 1) they said I love you way too fast. I know they’d known each other before, and that it worked to set up the plot for the full length book, but it had only been a few days so it didn’t feel all that believable. 2) Madison blames and hates Quentin by the end — thus setting up Rival Hearts — even though she knows it was ultimately her father who drove him away. Of course she feels hurt and betrayed by him staying away, but she has no idea what her dad said to him to make him never contact her or Tobias again. The note that Quentin writes her, we don’t see her actually get, so I wonder if that’ll come into play in Rival Hearts.
Although her dad’s speech to Quentin was harsh and he definitely should’ve gone about it differently, he wasn’t technically wrong. For the two of them to want to get married so young and so fast, that would’ve been a mistake.
It was cool to see young Tobias and Xander, especially after reading their books last year. We got a glimpse of Tobias and Madison’s sibling dynamic in Wild Card, so I loved getting to see more of that in this prequel and hopefully more in Rival Hearts. This prequel is over 100 pages long, so it’s definitely a novella, not a short story prequel!
Like with all new adult romance books, I recommend this for 18+ due to some of the sexual content, but as always, don’t let me tell you what to do!
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REVIEWS OF MAGGIE RAWDON’S BOOKS:
“Personal Foul” (Plays & Penalties #3) — ARC
“Reverse Pass” (Plays & Penalties #4) — ARC
“Pick Six” (Seattle Phantom Football #1) — ARC
“Overtime” (Seattle Phantom Football #2) — coming soon
“Wild Card” (Seattle Phantom Football #3) — ARC
“Play Fake” (Plays & Penalties #1) — coming soon
“Delay of Game” (Plays & Penalties #1) — coming soon
buried in a bookshelf 