The Evolution of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin

Gut Instinct Rating - 4.5

Characters - 4

Believability for type and topics - 3.5

Similarity to other books - 5

Writing Style - 4

Excitement Factor - 4

Story Line - 5

Title Relevance - 4

Dust Jacket Art - 4

Goodreads users gave this book a 4.35. I think it was more deserving of a 4.17.

Emoji Meter: 😮 😍 😵

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Published in 2012.

Pages: 527.

Publishing Company: Simon & Schuster

Number of books by author: 7 Novels

Genre: YA Fiction.

So first off... the ending has me going and the final in the trilogy is definitely going on my TBR! I would definitely recommend this book to someone, but I would only do it under the assumption that they're interested in reading a full trilogy. Some people don't enjoy trilogies, but this is something I would recommend for sure. The characters seemed a bit "advanced" for 17. And maybe that's their abnormalities, but all of the characters seemed somewhat advanced. The parents seemed like a Hollywood movie couple - absentee father with an overbearing mom who is totally fine with their adolescent daughter having their boyfriend spend the night several times a week just down the hall.... (I'm not so sure about this in reality). I also still don't get the name thing... maybe I'm just stupid, but I don't get why her name isn't Mara or where it came from... (if someone knows, please tell me...) The character breakdowns, too, bothered me in the scheme of the reality of the book. These lines blurred a lot and it became just a matter of me getting annoyed with how unrealistic the whole situation really was. I also thought for a couple who's barely kissing, the sexy-scenes were pretty, hot and heavy. I think maybe Hodkin needs to refresh

her knowledge of her audience a bit. I'm not sure who's reading these books, but I don't know if I'd be okay with my 13 or 14 year old reading this book.... maybe I would, I don't know. I'm not for censorship, but it's a little steep for the younger-end of YA fiction. Moving forward, however, it didn't take much for this to be a unique and exciting read at all. It was all over the board with all kinds of things mixed in with this and that, and I was being thrown from point A to B and then all of a sudden I was in Mexico! It was just really intense stuff. I didn't care for the writing style again in this book... must we have the "before" chapters. One of them didn't even matter... I would've much rather seen this catalogued in some other way than "BEFORE." But that's all personal preference and what not. The story line itself made sense in general. I think it definitely required you to read The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer first, but it was thorough and I felt like with the conclusion of this book, most of my questions (of course not everything, because there is a final book) were answered and I was given some direction as to where The Retribution of Mara Dyer is leading me. Yet again, the artwork didn't really make sense, but it didn't not make sense either. It was fine, whatever, lah-de-dah. The title was also just kind of bland. I'm sure something more exciting could've been drawn up, but it did its job.

It doesn't currently appear that there is any desire to make this a book or movie, but there should be some interest by now... it's been a few years since the books have been released and there's a lot of buzz about them (even still)... Simon & Schuster always gets the short end of the stick.