Series Review: MARA DYER by Michelle Hodkin

  

Series Title: Mara Dyer

Book Titles: 

1. The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer

2. The Evolution of Mara Dyer

3. The Retribution of Mara Dyer

Author: Michelle Hodkin 

Summary (Unbecoming): Mara Dyer doesn't think life can get any stranger than waking up in a hospital with no memory of how she got there. 
It can.

She believes there must be more to the accident she can't remember that killed her friends and left her mysteriously. 
There is.

She doesn't believe that after everything she's been through, she can fall in love. 
She's wrong.

Why I read it: I had heard about the first book a while back when it first came out, and I was intrigued, but it was never a priority. This year, when I started this blog and started really following the booktube community, I started seeing the series again. Then, the third book was released this November and all pre-ordered copies were signed! So in July, I pre-ordered my copy and ordered the first two books. Then I marathoned the entire series when Retribution arrived at my house!

Thoughts: I seriously LOVED this trilogy. I have heard a lot of people had issues with the third book, and I can understand their reservations, but I had none of the same problems. I ran through the three books in about a week, and they're not small books. But that's how good they were.

The characters are fantastic. Mara is an unreliable narrator, as even she doesn't know what's going on around her, but she has a good heart, and I was constantly rooting for her throughout the series. Noah Shaw is the perfect bad boy with a heart of gold and I totally fell in love with him. Like seriously, Noah Shaw has jumped near the top of my book boyfriends list. But I also love Jamie Roth! Jamie is Mara's first friend at her new school, and he stole my heart. I was thrilled when he continued to be a main character in the trilogy.

Mara's family is also present throughout the series, which is a welcome surprise in a YA world where most of the families are unimportant to the story. Mara's parents want nothing but for Mara to be better, and her brothers are always on her side, which was a wonderful addition to the story.

As far as Mara and Noah are concerned, their romance is very realistic to me. There is an instant attraction, but a slow-build to anything real, and I loved every delicious second.

Michelle Hodkin's writing is perfectly suited to this kind of story. The way she describes Mara's hallucinations make you feel paranoid and crazy right along with Mara. It's a very visceral experience. I wanted to keep reading. I wanted to learn more.

The setting was great, too. Being a Florida native, I know firsthand what it feels like to be in Florida, and Hodkin paints that picture perfectly, as well.

I honestly wasn't sure what to expect with this series. I'd heard it was a thrilling, mess-with-your-mind adventure, and it totally was. But it certainly has some elements that I wasn't expecting, which made the series even more un-put-down-able to me. It had everything I love in a series: mystery, thrills, great characters and a fantastic romance.

I seriously adored this series. If you love a palpable romance between two leads, a mystery that you're racing to solve, and unreliable narrators, I would highly recommend you check out this trilogy!

Individual ratings: 
Unbecoming: 5/5 stars
Evolution: 5/5 stars
Retribution: 5/5 stars

Rating overall: 5/5 stars

Tell me: have YOU read the Mara Dyer series yet? What did you think of them? Let me know in the comments below! 

Review: WE WERE LIARS by E. Lockhart

Title: We Were Liars
Author: E. Lockhart
Published date: May 13th, 2014
Summary: A beautiful and distinguished family. 
A private island. 
A brilliant, damaged girl; a passionate, political boy. 
A group of four friends--the Liars--whose friendship turns destructive. 
A revolution. An accident. A secret. 
Lies upon lies. 
True love. 
The truth. 

We Were Liars is a modern, sophisticated suspense novel from National Book Award finalist and Printz Award honoree E. Lockhart. 
Read it. 
And if anyone asks you how it ends, just LIE. 

Why I read it: This summer, I really started getting into book blogging/booktube. I started following a bunch of booktubers on YouTube, and ALL of them started talking about this book. And it was one I hadn't really heard much about until then, because I'm not usually a contemporary YA reader (although that is quickly changing.) But since all of booktube started raving about this book, I knew I had to read it. I bought it at Half Price Books one day and as soon as I finished Where She Went, I dove into this book. And since it's so short, I flew through it in a day and a half.

Thoughts: We Were Liars follows the story of Cadence, who spends her summers on a private island with her beautiful, rich family, the Sinclairs. From what I've heard, the writing style in this book is different than Lockhart's usual writing style in her previous novels, but it is hauntingly beautiful. The way sentences are broken up onto different lines. The intense descriptions of Cadence's emotions. Early on in the book, Cadence describes the day her father left her and her mother. She says "Then he took out a gun and shot me in the chest." And at first, I thought that he had really shot his own daughter. But then her mother tells her to be normal, pull it together, and they walk back into the house, so I realized it was just a metaphor for her emotion. This happens several times in the novel, and it's one of my favorite parts.

The narration switches back and forth between the present, and two summers ago, when the incident occurred. Through these flashbacks and present plot, we discover all of the Sinclairs' secrets alongside Cadence, whose memory of that summer has been impaired.

Though the novel is short, the character descriptions are so perfect and detailed, and by the end of the book, I loved each of the Liars so much.

The description is correct, though. Go into this book knowing as little as possible. It's a contemporary like I've never read before, and I absolutely adored it.

Rating: 5/5 stars