The Retribution of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin

Gut Instinct Rating - 3.5

Characters - 3

Believability for type and topics - 2

Similarity to other books - 3

Writing Style - 4

Excitement Factor - 3

Story Line - 2

Title Relevance - 5

Cover art - 5

To read or not to read? If only to finish this series. But I don't think I'd recommend simply reading this book on its own. And, I could've done without this book, really.

Movie? None

Goodreads users gave this book a 4.15. I think it was more deserving of a 3.34.

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Published November 3, 2015.

Pages: 470

Publishing Company: Simon & Schuster Books For Young Readers

Number of books by author: 7 (Book 3 of 3 in Mara Dyer Trilogy)

Genre: YA Fiction

Well, this was a let down. Know that feeling when you read a book and then some movie or TV producer absolutely ruins it? Or a remake of an old movie? This was that. The ending of book 2 was like, "WTF?!" and then we get this... run-away bullshit? And the ending...! Really. This only got the higher marks it did because it was part of a trilogy. If this was a standalone book, it would've been much worse.

The characters were pretty consistent from previous books, but the author was trying to throw too many twists and turns in their revelations and it was just way too overdone. Everything was too coincidental when it came to the relationships and dynamics between each character that it felt too forced. The characters that already existed maintained their dynamics for the most part, and that was how this received the markings it did.

But, this book was so far from believable - it felt like the author took a million different twists and turns from other fantasy and superhero novels and tried to fit all of those events into this story line, and then put the ending in as it was. It was horribly unbelievable (which is my thing with books - I gotta believe in the words). This, paired with shitty character scenarios, basically made this book suck. Was it exciting? Sure, I guess so. But it wasn't good. A movie can be exciting enough to keep watching, but it can still suck. And this book was horrible. Books 1 and 2 of this trilogy were cohesive, they led with one another, and then you have this fucking mess of a story line in book 3. I really wanted to put it down, but I thought there was going to be some big "aha-moment," (which there wasn't) that was going to make my heart feel for all these characters. It was just one big shit show.

If you've read books 1 and 2, and you're about to venture into this 3rd book, do it with low (very low) expectations, because it wasn't up to par with the writing of the first portion of the series. (I truly hope there won't be a fourth book. And if there is, I won't be reading it.)