Reviews tagging 'Drug use'

The Retribution of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin

4 reviews

laurenevlyn's review

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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Content Warnings

Graphic: Confinement, Forced institutionalization, Grief, Mental illness, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Violence, Blood, Child death, Medical trauma, Medical content, Injury/Injury detail, Self harm, Body horror, Child abuse, Death, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Gaslighting, Gun violence, Torture, and Murder

Moderate: Sexual violence, Sexual content, Rape, and Sexual assault

Minor: Abortion, Pregnancy, Infertility, Cancer, Vomit, Miscarriage, Racial slurs, Racism, and Classism

nancatto's review against another edition

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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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Self harm, Child abuse, Confinement, Forced institutionalization, Gaslighting, Medical content, Medical trauma, Murder, Sexual harassment, Blood, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, and Sexual assault

Moderate: Suicide attempt, Mental illness, Injury/Injury detail, Self harm, Suicidal thoughts, Cursing, and Suicide

tayamarieh's review

adventurous dark mysterious tense fast-paced

• Diverse cast of characters? Yes

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Death, Forced institutionalization, Medical trauma, Mental illness, Murder, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Self harm, Sexual violence, and Violence

Moderate: Body horror, Drug use, Eating disorder, Gun violence, Medical content, Sexual assault, Sexual content, and Torture

butterfliesonmybookshelf's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional mysterious sad 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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Self harm, Body horror, Death, Forced institutionalization, Gore, Medical content, Medical trauma, Mental illness, Murder, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide attempt, and Vomit

Moderate: Drug use and Gun violence

Minor: Abortion