Hi, guys!
I'm so very sorry for not posting anything in FOREVER, but I've been SO busy with school these past few weeks. It's insane! But, nevermind that, I'm here now and I'm determined to catch up on my book reviews, since I have yet to share my impressions on a lot of the books I read with you.
Therefore, today, I'm going to talk about the Mara Dyer trilogy, by Michelle Hodkin.
STORY TIME: I was browsing through Tumblr one day and I kept seeing "Mara Dyer" pop up on my screen. It was literally all over my feed. And, of course, I had no idea what that even was, since I hadn't heard of this trilogy before in my life. So I just kept scrolling and it just kept bugging me until my curiosity got the best of me (as it usually happens) and I googled it. And I found out that Mara Dyer wasn't, in fact, a person. It was a book. A book with a very pretty cover (can we please take a moment to contemplate just how AWESOME it is?) and a very promising summary:
"Mara Dyer believes life can't 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 strangely unharmed.
There is.
She doesn't believe that after everything she's been through, she can fall in love.
She's wrong."
This is the story of how I fell in love.
No, but seriously, for some reason, I got incredibly excited about this book - it rocketed to the top of my TBR list. I just had to have it. So I ordered it and suffered through an agonizing wait until we were finally united.
First of all, the very cool thing about this book is that the main character is called MARA. Do you know WHY? Because I actually have a friend called Mara. And you're going to go: "So...?". Well, let me tell you, as a person who does not live in the US or the UK, that this almost never happens. So this is important, OK??
Now to the part where I actually review the book...
*POSSIBLE SPOILER ALERT*
This book had me hooked from the very first page, in which we find out that Mara Dyer is not actually named Mara Dyer. It's a nom-de-plume. This combined with the words "lawyers" and "body count" made me think that maybe this was going to be the story of a teenage serial killer. Close enough.
I later discovered that this is actually a paranormal read. I pretty much dismissed the idea that she actually kills people with her MIND and was prepared to learn the actual truth until the third book, when it became pretty clear to me that she does, indeed, kill people with her mind. I don't have a problem with that, really, I just wasn't expecting the explanation to be this obvious and still not obvious at all. I was pretty much ready to declare Mara crazy and get on with it.
To be perfectly honest, the thing I liked most about these books was not the paranormal aspect of it, but rather the relationship between Mara and (the incredibly dreamy) Noah Shaw - what can I say, I'm a sucker for pretty boys (that sounded way dirtier than I intended but OH WELL). I found them extremely enjoyable together. Especially in the first book, I thought their humour, wit and sarcasm balanced the otherwise very gruesome and dark stuff that was going on. Like, oh, there's a dead body over there, but Noah and Mara are having a cute argument about their favourite colours so everything's going to be okay. However, I found that this became less and less the case, especially in the third book, when they weren't together almost at all - and when they did, Noah did something VERY BAD, BAD NOAH and then Mara revealed that she can bring people back from the dead SOMEHOW (I'm still hopelessly confused). I did appreciate their romantic date in the second book, though, and I enjoyed that that particular scene was chosen for the trailer (BTW, everyone should check out the trailer for The Evolution of Mara Dyer, the music is so on point and the actors are gorgeous!).
Though I have to say, I mostly enjoyed this trilogy, I think it does have some flaws - and what book doesn't? - but these bothered me more than the usual, exactly because this story has so much potential and is so awesome and unexpected. I just found that some aspects were introduced into the plot and were never quite explained properly. This didn't bother me at all in the first book, as I was sure that the next two volumes to come would do a great job of clearly and logically stating the answers to my questions. In this department, I was a little disappointed. I don't like leaving a book feeling like I'm not quite done with it, like I haven't yet understood it properly, and this is something that happened after I read the Mara Dyer trilogy.
Of course, this is only my opinion, and maybe other people enjoyed the bigger dose of mystery this book entailed. Overall, it was a good read, going on very good but not quite reaching it for me. I do enjoy Michelle Hodkin's writing and I certainly hope to see more from her in the near future.
I hope you, guys, enjoyed this review and I promise I'll try to keep them coming more frequently, now that summer is here.
Bye, everyone!
Just Maddy xoxo
I'm so very sorry for not posting anything in FOREVER, but I've been SO busy with school these past few weeks. It's insane! But, nevermind that, I'm here now and I'm determined to catch up on my book reviews, since I have yet to share my impressions on a lot of the books I read with you.
Therefore, today, I'm going to talk about the Mara Dyer trilogy, by Michelle Hodkin.
STORY TIME: I was browsing through Tumblr one day and I kept seeing "Mara Dyer" pop up on my screen. It was literally all over my feed. And, of course, I had no idea what that even was, since I hadn't heard of this trilogy before in my life. So I just kept scrolling and it just kept bugging me until my curiosity got the best of me (as it usually happens) and I googled it. And I found out that Mara Dyer wasn't, in fact, a person. It was a book. A book with a very pretty cover (can we please take a moment to contemplate just how AWESOME it is?) and a very promising summary:
"Mara Dyer believes life can't 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 strangely unharmed.
There is.
She doesn't believe that after everything she's been through, she can fall in love.
She's wrong."
This is the story of how I fell in love.
No, but seriously, for some reason, I got incredibly excited about this book - it rocketed to the top of my TBR list. I just had to have it. So I ordered it and suffered through an agonizing wait until we were finally united.
First of all, the very cool thing about this book is that the main character is called MARA. Do you know WHY? Because I actually have a friend called Mara. And you're going to go: "So...?". Well, let me tell you, as a person who does not live in the US or the UK, that this almost never happens. So this is important, OK??
Now to the part where I actually review the book...
*POSSIBLE SPOILER ALERT*
This book had me hooked from the very first page, in which we find out that Mara Dyer is not actually named Mara Dyer. It's a nom-de-plume. This combined with the words "lawyers" and "body count" made me think that maybe this was going to be the story of a teenage serial killer. Close enough.
I later discovered that this is actually a paranormal read. I pretty much dismissed the idea that she actually kills people with her MIND and was prepared to learn the actual truth until the third book, when it became pretty clear to me that she does, indeed, kill people with her mind. I don't have a problem with that, really, I just wasn't expecting the explanation to be this obvious and still not obvious at all. I was pretty much ready to declare Mara crazy and get on with it.
To be perfectly honest, the thing I liked most about these books was not the paranormal aspect of it, but rather the relationship between Mara and (the incredibly dreamy) Noah Shaw - what can I say, I'm a sucker for pretty boys (that sounded way dirtier than I intended but OH WELL). I found them extremely enjoyable together. Especially in the first book, I thought their humour, wit and sarcasm balanced the otherwise very gruesome and dark stuff that was going on. Like, oh, there's a dead body over there, but Noah and Mara are having a cute argument about their favourite colours so everything's going to be okay. However, I found that this became less and less the case, especially in the third book, when they weren't together almost at all - and when they did, Noah did something VERY BAD, BAD NOAH and then Mara revealed that she can bring people back from the dead SOMEHOW (I'm still hopelessly confused). I did appreciate their romantic date in the second book, though, and I enjoyed that that particular scene was chosen for the trailer (BTW, everyone should check out the trailer for The Evolution of Mara Dyer, the music is so on point and the actors are gorgeous!).
Though I have to say, I mostly enjoyed this trilogy, I think it does have some flaws - and what book doesn't? - but these bothered me more than the usual, exactly because this story has so much potential and is so awesome and unexpected. I just found that some aspects were introduced into the plot and were never quite explained properly. This didn't bother me at all in the first book, as I was sure that the next two volumes to come would do a great job of clearly and logically stating the answers to my questions. In this department, I was a little disappointed. I don't like leaving a book feeling like I'm not quite done with it, like I haven't yet understood it properly, and this is something that happened after I read the Mara Dyer trilogy.
Of course, this is only my opinion, and maybe other people enjoyed the bigger dose of mystery this book entailed. Overall, it was a good read, going on very good but not quite reaching it for me. I do enjoy Michelle Hodkin's writing and I certainly hope to see more from her in the near future.
I hope you, guys, enjoyed this review and I promise I'll try to keep them coming more frequently, now that summer is here.
Bye, everyone!
Just Maddy xoxo