Novel Review: The Retribution of Mara Dyer (Mara Dyer, #3) by Michelle Hodkin

Rating (Out of 5): ~4

Genre: YA Paranormal Romance

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Release Date: November 2014

Spoilers?: No.

Buy it here: Amazon. Barnes and Noble. Book Depository. Powells.

Teaser Tuesday. Wishlist Thursday.

Goodreads Synopsis:

Mara Dyer wants to believe there's more to the lies she’s been told.
There is.

She doesn’t stop to think about where her quest for the truth might lead.
She should.

She never had to imagine how far she would go for vengeance.
She will now.

Loyalties are betrayed, guilt and innocence tangle, and fate and chance collide in this shocking conclusion to Mara Dyer’s story.
Retribution has arrived.

The Cover:

I love all the covers of this series. They all go together so well, and this one is just as pretty as the others. And I think it fits the book very well, too.

Quotes:

•  "'The people we care about are always worth more to us than the people we don’t. No matter what anyone pretends.’” (Hardback, Pg. 399)
• "The ability to heal does not make one good any more than the ability to kill makes one evil. Kill the right people, and you become a hero. Heal the wrong ones, and you become a villain. It is our choices that define us, not our abilities.” (Pg. 422)

Review:

This last book was surprising and hard and so very good.

Mara goes through a hard change, a very dark one. There’s some serious violence here, and Mara deals with it the only way she can, which is something that everyone else has a very hard time taking. But she has violence and destruction in her, and she accepts that.

Noah is missing. Horribly so. And this does horrible things to Mara, in particular.

Mara does a lot, going on a journey with several people, doing bad things and things that need to happen. I don’t know what else to say, because I don’t want to ruin any of it.

The climax is… surprising, and horrible, and I’m still a little unsure of how it worked. But it did, and I’m okay with that. I wanted that. We get some answers for Mara’s visions, as well as how they all work and why they’re like this.

I will say that I was a little disappointed with the opening line of the first book (“My name is not Mara Dyer…”), because I had hoped it would be more, there would be more answer and excitement to that statement, but that’s all right.

This was a very good conclusion to the series. I’m happy with how it all worked out, and I liked the dark side that Mara ended up on, with the surprise of it. I look forward to whatever Hodkin releases next.