Victory at Prescott High: The Havoc Boys, Book 5

I think this book has ended my ability to read any future works by C.M. The constant injection of modern day politics and pop culture in a story set in the future makes staying immersed in the story impossible. It makes for numerous and glaring plot holes so spoiler alert if you continue reading. Some of these issues have played out over multiple books but I am summarizing it all on this review.Supposedly Bernies whole heart is her remaining sister who their abusive parents can't be bothered to even provide her with shoes that fit. Yet in her life of constant thievery, Bernie never once takes something to benefit her sister. She complains repeatedly about it while bragging about all the luxury products she lifts for herself (lipsticks, high heels, alcohol, etc.).She spouts of about misogyny and the patriarchy with things like virginity has no value when in reference to hers but on multiple occasions talks about how great it is that Oscar was a virgin and has only been with her.This entire story arc is set in a world years after the lockdowns of covid-19 have been lifted. Yet things like a single tik tok video of a girl getting sick over snails in paella is referenced. While never explicitly stated, the implication that Bernie is wearing a shirt with Donald Trump on it and she doesn't know who he is would indicate this must be at least 15 years in the future. I base this on every school age child currently would know who Donald Trump is, especially one who claims to be extremely political as Bernie did in this book. Which, realistically probably puts this much further in the future than 15 years but that is the bare minimum I could reasonably see.The copious use of classic cars is interesting considering they are expensive and hard to come by now, even in junker condition. Yet these extremely poor high school kids have them in spades and use 80 year old vehicles as daily drivers.Will boomer be a generic insult for all generations as they get older or was Mr. Darkwood in his 70's or older? Boomers are born between 1946 to 1964 so currently the youngest is 54.Bernie is a major hypocrite and driven by uniformed childish views. Saying you don't judge people out loud doesn't somehow magically negate the fact you are constantly judging everyone with her thoughts, verbal attacks, and actions. Constantly talking about rich people and how evil they are, all while doing everything including possible to become one of them. Complaining about the corruption of the school, government, law enforcement , etc when it was perceived to be against you but the moment you are in a position to take a chance at being the directing force of said corruption you are all for it. It shows you have no issues with the system you are supposedly raging against, you just want power.The constant assertion that money is the driving force behind the problems faced by those in Prescott is naive and demonstrably debunked by Bernie herself multiple times. Lack of funding may very well be a major issue with the school but dumping money into a corrupt system does nothing but benefit the corrupt. Culture is a major driver for success. Bernie says repeatedly about how she is a "Prescott ho" no matter where she is or what shes wearing. When given the opportunity to get a better education she doesn't even try. Blaming her substandard education up to that point for her not being able to. Yet she graduated with a C average. If she was truly that disadvantaged and behind the private school kids she would have failed, not graduated with average grades.I could go on but honestly i'm done investing energy in this trainwreck of a series.C.M., I think you should take the advice you gave when stating Mr. Darkwood should Google things. While we are all entitled to our own opinions and beliefs, it is blatantly obvious that many yours are skewed due to living in a bubble of far left ideology. The electoral college protects Americans from mob rule. The constitution is being turned into swiss cheese and our rights are under attack. Please take some time to research issues in depth before championing a viewpoint. Changing the rules to benefit you in the now with almost always come back and bite you later. An excellent example of this would be how quickly ACB was appointed to the supreme court. Harry Ried pushed thru a change to lower the majority needed by the Senate in order to pass something he otherwise couldn't get enough support for in the moment. Mitch McConnell told him he would regret doing it, likely sooner than they think. Based on you admiration for RBG, which is well deserved, you probably recognize this is what McConnell meant. Changing rules to benefit you now paves the way for those rules to benefit your opposition in the future. Just because the popular vote favors your views today doesn't mean it will tomorrow. BTW, I'm not a Republican incase you feel the need to throw shade in future work as you did with ebon.

And I got about a fourth of the way into this one. Right up until the comment about the face on the T-shirt .I'm so sick of authors throwing in their political opinions and feelings concerning our president.I read fiction to get away from the just that. I don't throw my thoughts on the subject around and I'd hoped writers would keep theirs out of their books also.I'm sad Ms stunich is blind to what has been accomplished in the last four years and what's at stake now with who MAY be running this country.Yes I said it.I wish I could say it's with a heavy heart that I no longer follow this author and I'll miss her future books but it's not.The only regret I'll leave with is the fact I can't get my money back that I spent on of her books.Never did I imply this author was a bad writer. Infact she's one of the better ones. Her work is always top notch a go to without question it second thought.That being said in no way do I expect to be cater to by a fiction authors writing and I don't have to agree with what a person feels as I don't expect that of other people. What I didn't expect from a romance fiction author was thinly vailed opinions that push the volatile rhetoric needlessly dividing aCounty. I'd like the author to take the 499 I spent on this book and buy herself a cup of coffee maybe the caffeine to wake her up what's really going on.I'll change my stars because like I said she really is a good writer.

i am loving the book so far and am so excited to finish bernadette’s and the boys’ story!! however,im reviewing before i finish because i wanted to mention that authors do not cater to individual readers, nor bow down to every command, wish, or opinion of their readers. if you feel entitled enough to be upset at an author for using her own work to express her thoughts and opinions because they differ from your opinions and clash with your perception of what books are supposed to be to you, then perhaps you need to reevaluate what exactly youre upset at. books provide many things to many people be that escapism or representation. but to be upset at an author and give them a bad review because their art does not cater to your opinions and does not provide what YOU want it to provide, is a little more than unfair.im sure cm wont miss any of the readers who hold her to their own standard and expect her to act and think like someone who enjoyed the past presidential administration.

I own everything CM Stunich has written. Enough said. I like her work. This book didn't do it for me. I felt Ms. Stunich hijacked Bernie's character to express, in a heavy-handed fashion, her personal social/political viewpoints. It was glaring. This character didn't behave as she was originally written, certainly not as she had behaved in the preceding four books. As another reviewer mentioned, the driving motivation behind all the Havoc boys' actions was to secure Vic's inheritance--which will make ALL of them "rich people." Billionaires. For Bernie to state ad nauseam that she "hates all rich people" is hypocrisy at its finest.Ultimately, my disconnect from the character and this story was significant. I kept thinking, "Where is this coming from? Where's the motivation or support for this in Bernie's character development?" I actually skimmed through the previous books and looked. Nada.Yes, an author does have the right to use her characters as her "voice". However, it is also the reader's right to expect an honest character arc. If an author is going to use a character as a personal mouthpiece, do it from the beginning of the series. It is disingenuous not to. I read to escape and be entertained. This book was a disappointment in regard to both.

I originally rated this a bit higher. After a couple of days of thinking it over, of processing everything - I feel like I had to adjust my review.I'll lay out the positives: it's well written, and there's very few editing mistakes. The very beginning was excellent - I was hooked immediately, and was at the edge of my seat. Then again, Callum is my favourite, so....The series as a whole: I loved Havoc. It's exactly what I was wanting...dark, gritty, bloody, with REAL revenge.Chaos, Mayhem and Anarchy should have been 1 book. It was dragged out unnecessarily.Victory - so like I mentioned, started out great. I thought, "Yes! We're getting back to the dark, bloody times of Havoc!" And....then we didn't. We got lots of repeated internal monologue. As a few other people have said, got a bit fed up with the the repeated ebon. Bernie's character is written one way, but does the opposite. There were a lot of scenes that could have been excellent that were glossed over, only mentioned in passing.One thing I always thought CM did well was bedroom scenes (Groupie, right??) But I wasn't feeling them at all in this series. Finally, in Victory we got a group scene...it was okay.The list: again, started out great in Havoc. And got worse as time went on. Several people didn't really get their revenge, or if they did, it was half-hearted. I was hoping that the final showdown would be epic, but it was over and done with quickly. I so badly wanted them to suffer.The epilogues...to be honest, weren't needed. They weren't a HEA type, nothing really changed except their age.Preaching: I know I'm not the only one to remark on this - now, I'm all for an author writing about whatever they want. It's their work. I would no more try to dictate what an author writes than I would tell a painter how to paint. I regularly stand up for authors. But I have to say, that this has left a bad taste in my mouth. Days after reading this, I'm still working through everything. But throughout this series, it's almost like the reader is being preached to. Patronised. It's heavily political, with the author's own beliefs about a variety of topics heavily shoved down the reader's throats. Some things are repeated ad nauseum, for example, Bernie saying how much she hates rich people. (Yet everything they're doing is so they can become billionaires.)And maybe it was a coincidence, or maybe (with revenge being a theme) not, or maybe it was her way of standing up for herself...but it was like CM was throwing things into the books to get back at negative reviews. Someone complains about "ebon", and it's repeated constantly. Someone else mentions purple prose, and again, it's mentioned several times.I hate leaving bad reviews on books. I think the idea of this series is excellent. Unfortunately the execution wasn't. 💔

Is it really over? I'm at a loss....I really loved the HAVOC guys and of course Bernie and I'm not ready to leave these guys! I want more!!I genuinely loved the whole series and I'm glad they got the HEA they deserved.I have to be honest though, I kind of wanted to hear more from the guys POV especially towards the end, but all we got was Aaron's. It would have been really good to hear Victor or Oscar's perspective and feelings as to me those two are the most closed off emotionally and there was a lot of emotion in those last couple of chapters! I also feel like the many epilogues were a bit of a waste, it would have been nice to have one many years in the future, with kids etc to really see what there life is like but the epilogues we got didn't add anything in my opinion which was a shame.Overall this is a series I have loved And I know these characters are going to be on my mind for some time, Hael, Aaron, Vic, Oscar, Callum and of course Bernie!!If you are still thinking about characters and a story long after youve finished the book then you know you've read an amazing book and that's why this gets 5 stars for me....because I'm still thinking about these characters!! Blown away And highly recommend! I can't wait to read more from this author.

There's a great symmetry to the way this series is layed out five boys...five books. But after book three, when it started to get more intriguing, the rest of the series fell flat for me. I just wanted to finish to finish off the series. Sadly I was a bit disappointed with the remainder of it. this could have been written more concisely in three parts as originally planned but instead it kind of just dragged on in detail unnecessarily. A lot of phrases, character tropes, etc were repeated time and again that could have been cut.Not to say that there weren't some good plot points and well written scenes, cause there were. But I think this series needed to be edited a lot more before publication. There was just a lot of unnecessary fluff in the middle that made it get boring for me.

Sadly disappointed ☹️ After all the delays in release there was alot of anticipation and expectation, which did not deliver.Why not? Well for starters it was so repetitive! Internal monologuing and Bernie just got on my nerves. Sorry, but as the series progressed she annoyed me more and more and I realised that I didn’t like her at all. Plus, her figure is described as ‘thick’ with GG breasts and yet often wears no bra. Sorry, no!The list started well but fizzled, poor closure on the mother, best friend.....The word ebon exists but is shoved into everything and Bernie hates rich people and ends up as a billionaire.First two books are good, but imo it should have stayed a trilogy.

OK I have so many thoughts I'm trying to process.H.A.V.O.C. Hael, Aaron, Victor, Oscar, Callum. And of course, Bernadette. They are a force of nature in themselves. Dangerous, toxic, addictive... a sweet bitter kind of poison to one another that consumed me.There are many qualities I love about each character and I so appreciated the characteristics that separate them into their own person amongst the chaos. It should work and yet they do.They journey is a crazy toxic turbulent one that will suck the life out of you draining you dry. It's all consuming with so much passion it's honestly overwhelming at times but it fits these characters and their journey.I will say I feel like 5 books pushed it. This could have been 3 perfect books, the foundation of who they are, the crazy in the middle and then the conclusion to their journey. I feel if I'm being honest that it was stretched and I found myself skimming pages of internal monologue... something I NEVER DO. But it was to much. To many fillers, to much unnecessary drama that watered them down. It was frustrating.These characters are golden and I enjoyed them and their journey even though I was frustrated by it being stretched. There is growth and development of the characters. The story does progress and evolve into so much more than I anticipated and honestly fair play to the author for managing to incorporate so many things into the journey that added suspense, action and so many feelings. She did it well.All in all I'm happy with the ending and enjoyed the many epilogue at the end. It was a treat for sure. I can't say it's my favourite read ever but HAVOC left an impression that I will never forget and I don't regret reading them one bit. My only wish was that it wasn't so dragged out.