The Retribution Of Mara Dyer (2014) - Plot & Excerpts
When it comes to books, I can hold a grudge. After plodding through the first two installments of the Mara Dyer trilogy earlier this year, I thought I owed it to myself to read a book I knew would frustrate me. That and the feeling of incompleteness was like the hangnail that gets caught on your sweater. Just so you know, the protagonist is still agonizingly whiny, segments of writing can only be described as emo cheese, and blatant plot holes and cliches are still quite present. To be fair, a few chapters in, I did (surprisingly) find myself caught up in the story. It was well written, intelligent, and the movement of the plot, as well as the characters' dialogue during these chapters, didn't feel condescending or tedious. Sadly, this hardly lasted long enough to negate obvious flaws and cop-out conclusion. I won't go into these, because this book is the kind you'd either die to read or wouldn't bother with at all to begin with.Hodkin's choice of side-kick to the protagonist was endearing, but his profile annoyed me. The type of guy eternally relegated to the friendzone, but willing to do anything for our heroine, employs sarcasm or other means of comic relief, is non-white (in this case, mixed race) and has some ability that the heroine can't do without...until the plot doesn't require him anymore. Like the manic pixie girl trope, but for side kicks. Yeah. I have nothing good left to say and the conclusion is too painfully bleh to talk about. Enjoy your book. Aw, that was really bad.I quite liked Scary Mara - much better than self-hating Mara. And that's about all I liked. The tone of the book was all over the place (scary awful scene! quirky teenage jokes! murder and blood! lol popular culture reference! really hard decisions to contemplate! endless sex scenes instead!), which made the story feel extremely unrealistic and kept taking me out of the book. I found the first two books quite scary - this one was just silly. The plot itself also didn't flow well, everything they did was just wild guesses and they just happened to come across information (and people - oh yeah IT'S DANIEL WITH ALL THE ANSWERS HOW LOVELY). Especially at the start, how on earth did any part of that escape actually work out? Same with the ending and Noah's father - how, HOW did that work? Are all the bad guys that exceptionally stupid? It felt like a children's cartoon. Hopkin was trying SO HARD to make everyone cool and quirky and bad-ass and epic etc. etc., it actually accomplished the opposite.Why on Earth would they be safe now, by the way? Oh, he didn't do it? We'll just let them go then. What? You're going to write a book? There's a lawyer? What? You have the power to save the world but love is more important? And god, that stuff about how they weren't normal teenagers anymore, no matter what they looked like, they were much more ancient now having gone through all that - dudes, the decisions you're making, I couldn't imagine anything more cliche teenager than that. And what is your life going to be now? Pretend-college? Live in the aunt's house, do nothing but fuck all day and gaze into each other's eyes? Mara will get mad and kill people, but oh well, we have a mind-control dude, we'll stay out of jail, no problemo. "I'm still deciding whether or not to wear that necklace and all it entails. Oh wait the book is over? Oh well!" They don't even TALK to the professor guy! He was such a get-out-of-jail-free card. HOW WILL THEY POSSIBLY SURVIVE THIS oh never mind. HOW WILL THEY EVER GET ANSWERS oh never mind he's left them LETTERS. Ugh.And the DNA stuff was ridiculous, I wish she'd just called it magic. Oh, very sciencey, a DNA anomaly THAT WILL ACTIVATE ONLY IF YOUR SISTER DIES, AND ONLY IF SHE'S KILLED BY THE RIGHT PEOPLE. She should've just called it magic. Same with the psychological profiles, medications and diagnoses. It all sounds nice, but is utter crap. She should've just kept it vague. This was so jarring.Kind of sad. I remember how impressed I was in book 1 that we actually saw someone in a book suffer from serious PTSD, since most books just throw shit at their characters and then skip the trauma part. And then book 3 was like "trauma? THAT WOULD BE INCONVENIENT TO HER MURDER TENDENCIES". Sigh.Too much Caps Lock. It's just a book. If you care about Mara & Noah a lot, you'll probably really like this.
What do You think about The Retribution Of Mara Dyer (2014)?
This book was amazing! One of the best conclusions I have ever read! The ending got me so messed up!
—mmb
tbh I'm glad its over but then I also loved it....
—ttt
*emotionally damaged* I can't believe it is over.
—synzaku
