Author: Michelle Hodkin
Date of Publication: November 4, 2014
Formats Available: Hardcover, Paperback, E-book
Buy This Book: Amazon
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.
My Review:
The Retribution of Mara Dyer has been a long time coming, and after numerous pushed back release dates I was thrilled when I was finally able to hold the finished product in my hands. The Mara Dyer series has been on of my favorite of all time, so saying I had high expectations for this book would be an understatement. It's taken me a long time to get to writing this review, the conclusion of this series is so dark and intense that it's taken me awhile to wrap my brain around everything that happened enough to put everything I felt into words. But if I had to sum it up in just a few, I would say I absolutely loved every second of the harsh but exciting ride.
Hands down one of the most fascinating parts of this series was watching how much Mara has changed from book one. Mara has gone through so much that it's impossible for her not to have changed, but I wasn't expecting to be so surprised by the person she's come to be. Instead being of a clear cut heroine Mara takes the cake as the most morally ambiguous protagonist in YA fiction. I found myself, throughout much of the novel, not sure what to think of her and her actions. This is the book that really changed my opinion about Mara, not in a bad way, but in a way that made me realize this wasn't the somewhat lighter-hearted school story heroine we met in the first book.
Mara is a girl with a purpose, she doesn't care what she has to do in order to get what she wants, Noah. Despite her questionable actions I was able to relate to her overwhelming love for Noah. She would do absolutely anything for him and that love was what kept her human. Mara completely dedicated herself to finding Noah, proving that he was alive, and absolutely nobody was going to stand in her way. Even though her love for Noah was what kept her human, it was also what brought many of her questionable actions into play, making it the cause of her moral ambiguity. That was the thing about this book, I never knew who was bad and who was good, and even now, after I've finished, I still don't know. But really, that was the beauty of it.
The best part of this novel was definitely getting answers to all the questions I've had since the first book. With flashbacks to the past, that I absolutely loved, and revelations around every corner, the ending of the novel was satisfying in that I finally knew what I had always been dying to find out. One thing I will say about this novel is that the plot is complex, I had to read some sections a couple times to finally absorb everything, but finally getting the answers to questions that have been on my mind for over a year was definitely worth it.
The conclusion of the Mara Dyer series is just as thrilling as I had hoped and I'm so sad to see the series end. If there is one YA series I would recommend above all others it would be this one. Hodkin is the most talented writer in YA fiction and I'm eagerly anticipating what she's going to write next.
5/5
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