A Curse of Mayhem is the second book in Sunayna Prasad’s Magical Missions series, which follows the story of orphaned teenager Alyssa McCarthy, who gets unexpected magical powers. Prasad makes sure to waste no time dropping readers right into the action in this installment; in the opening pages, a mysterious visitor brings a message to the teenage girl: 

Lilac-colored smoke poured in through the slight opening under Alyssa’s bedroom window. Alyssa leaped back. She swore the window had been closed when she’d come in here a few minutes ago.

The gas clouded into her room, blocking her sight. It washed onto her, causing her to squint and lean back. She coughed, rubbed her eyes, and opened them. The smoke faded. Someone must’ve pulled a prank, and not just any kind—one that involved…wizardry....

Despite the freezing air this autumn evening, Alyssa stepped onto the front porch. A piece of paper appeared out of nowhere, making her jump. She picked it up, anyway.

Welcome back to magic.

It took several years for the author to develop Alyssa’s storyline, she says, but she envisioned it as multiple books from the very start of her creative process. “I’ve always been attracted to the idea of a series,” she says. “I come up with ideas, and I want to know what’s going to happen and want the reader to feel like continuing to see what will happen next.”

Although she counts J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series as a major influence on the Magical Missions stories, Prasad tells Kirkus Reviews that she’s also a major film buff: “Most of the inspiration for [A Curse of Mayhem] came from movies,” she says, specifically referencing the blockbuster 2013 animated film Frozen—which, like Prasad’s work, is a mythical tale of a young woman who has magical powers that she doesn’t quite understand—and 2012’s ParaNorman, another animated movie that tells the story of a young boy who battles monsters to save his town from a terrible curse.

The Long Island, New York, native says that she’s been writing stories since the age of 6 and that she’s always been a fan of fantasy tales with female protagonists. Although she imagines that Alyssa’s story will appeal most to middle school–aged children, Prasad notes that she doesn’t necessarily write with a particular audience in mind.

The plot of A Curse of Mayhem picks up six months after the end of the first Magical Missions book, 2019’s The Frights of Fiji, in which Alyssa tragically lost her parents in a car accident but also discovered the wonders of magic. However, the teen believes that she’s left magic behind her at the start of this second book. However, she’s soon visited by a skeleton named Errol, who curses her with powers that prove to be seriously problematic, as they consistently get her into one crisis after another. The central mystery of A Curse of Mayhem centers on Errol’s identity and what he wants, but the novel also effectively addresses the problem of how Alyssa can use her magic without harming herself or the people around her: 

As Alyssa picked up the shoebox, her palms warmed up, and light beams shot out of both hands. She screamed as the rays smashed into each other, and then faded, revealing a tiny, rainbow-colored, bouncy ball.

Alyssa’s body stiffened, as if paralyzed. Her jaw hung as she gaped at the bouncing ball. How could I have done magic? Alyssa asked herself. I’m not a wizard.

The author notes that she reworked the title of the book a few times, first calling it Wizardry Goes Wild and later The Unruly Curse before settling on A Curse of Mayhem.Prasad says that she always knew that Alyssa would have a curse that she’d have to learn to live with. It’s a narrative choice that’s sure to remind many slightly older readers of stories that they already love—such as the 1997-2003 TV show Buffy the Vampire Slayer or the cult classic The Craft, a 1996 film about a group of teen witches who must deal with the consequences of their spellcasting. The author also reveals that she was determined not to sugarcoat her story, preferring to offer realistic details about the monsters that plague her protagonist and to concentrate on Alyssa’s real-life struggles to relate to others—including her guardian, Alex, and her teenage friends who don’t quite get what’s going on with her. 

The author says that, in her writing practice, she’s focused on getting to 1,000 words each day, and she notes that she always needs an outline before she gets started putting her words down on paper. “I’ve tried writing without outlines, or writing out of order, and it didn’t work well for me,” she says. “But sometimes you have to let it be sloppy—to get the ideas down and improve as you go.”

The finished novel gained praise from Kirkus Reviews, whose reviewer notes that Prasad’s “unadorned writing style accommodates more character discourse than scene descriptions. But she leaves room for playfully worded details: Magical tech works anywhere, courtesy of an enchanted satellite in space, invisible to non-wizard astronauts.” 

With such tech-y fantasy material in her fiction, it’s no surprise that she likens her writing process to playing a video game—one in which “I level up each time I rewrite.” It’s just the kind of language that Prasad’s younger readership would find relatable—and they may find similar kinship with teen Alyssa as they follow her ongoing magical adventures.

Kim Lyons is a Western Pennsylvania–based writer and editor with a soft spot for a great story.