Reviews with content warning for Death - The Retribution of Mara Dyer

Reviews tagging 'Death'

The Retribution of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin

15 reviews

elliott_the_clementine's review against another edition

dark fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

I reread the Mara Dyer trilogy on a whim, mostly because it was a series that I adored when I was twelve. While I did not enjoy the books nearly as much now as I did then, I still valued what the books did for me as an adolescent who faced some of the same things (though not nearly to as extreme of a degree) as Mara. While a mature perspective reveals the books to be more often than not a problematic romanticization of many kinds of mental illness and a fetishization of trauma, I come away with gratitude that Mara Dyer existed during a time when I did not have the emotional vocabulary to describe my experiences.

Please mind the trigger warnings.

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ingrid13's review

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adventurous dark tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

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kayanoelle's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Why would you do this to me *drowns in a pool of own tears*

"I love you. Today. Tonight. Tomorrow. Forever. If I were to live a thousand years, I would belong to you for all of them. If I were to live a thousand lives, I would want to make you mine in each one."

At no point in this book did I know what was going to happen and l'm still confused but I was sooo captivated and the epilogue was so clever.

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violetvulptex's review against another edition

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dark mysterious reflective tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.75

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236girls's review

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dark emotional hopeful sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

and they will love each other to ruins!!!!! what a ride what a fun rag tag group of friends

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laurenevlyn's review

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

I can’t even begin to describe how much I loved this series! Mara is a wonderfully written morally grey character, and her suffering pains me to my core and that’s how you know she’s well written. The little amount of Noah in this book is criminal, but I will excuse it because his small amount of scenes only made me live him more. I cried so hard for him, but mostly for Mara. Even writing this review is making me emotional haha.

the unfairness of her existence and her brief death had me practically sobbing. The letter from her grandmother though, that’s what broke me. “It isn’t your fault. It’s nothing you did.” I don’t know why but that just tore my heart into a million pieces.

Anyways, I loved this book. It was a bit slow in the middle but it was so worth it!

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nancatto's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Loveable characters? It's complicated

4.5

rating- 4.5*
It takes a lot for me to like a book enough to finish it in 2 days even while I'm sick. This finale to the series was amazing. The writing was fast paced and the plot was interesting throughout. The trio of Mara, Jamie and Stella figuring stuff out together was everything I could've wanted. The story buildup, the investigation scenes and the absolutely insane parts of the book I loved it all. This series is all about the writing tbh. It's genuinely very well written. I loved how it got all sci-fi and I loved the flashback parts. Some of the stuff written is genuinely creepy and messed up so that was pretty interesting. It sort of gave me verity vibes from the way the creepy scenes were written.
I clearly ate this book up so i do recommend it, but i'm not sure if i'll end up rereading it ever. The writing though. gonna be thinking about that for a while.

Some things that weren't great:
- (mild spoiler)

After Stella leaves Mara and Jamie there is no mention of what happened to her?? like that's such a big lose end specially since she's such a big part of this book.

- the actual plot twist at the end was not even that great?? It wasn't predictable necessarily but i didn't like it either.

Noah's dad has literally NOT A SINGLE dialogue the whole series and then somehow he turns out to be the bad guy behind it all? like sure it makes sense the way it's written but it didn't fit well tbh. At one point i literally started expecting Daniel to be the mastermind lmao

- i do not like it when author's tell the whole story from one person's perspective and then randomly start doing two person perspective at the end.
- i reallyy didn't mind the marshaw romance in the last two books, but somehow in the end of this book the romance was insufferable for me. It was cringe and just not great except maybe one scene.
Also it was weird how Mara and Noah were basically taking up all the story before but then this book completely shifted to not having Noah most of the story, it felt a bit inconsistent.

that part in the end where Mara talks about writing her story and then says that "its a love story" it made me cringe so hard, other stuff about them "needing" each other wasn't great

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