I worry about how young people struggling with mental health issues or who are vulnerable to them would take it. But in this case, the romanticism of self-harm is extremely uncomfortable to read. Does every book have a moral obligation to it’s audience? I don’t think so. There’s a lot of obsession with suicide and self-harm in the novel, particularly at the end. I mentioned in my review of The Unbecoming of Mara Dyerhow the series touches on some serious issues in a problematic way. Mara also casually jokes about killing herself to other characters. Really? I thought we were past using that term like it doesn’t hurt and trivialise people with mental disabilities. It irked me that Mara, at one point in her internal narration, describes herself as “retarded”. But in this book, the chapters quickly became interesting, fuller, and essential to the main story. But I’ve realised why these Before chapters rubbed me the wrong way in The Evolution of Mara Dyer. It often felt like they were exoticising the Indian setting and presenting Mara’s grandmother as primitive. She wrote with lush imagery in her Before chapters, and Mara’s distinct voice was wildly different from her grandmother’s. Michelle Hodkin is quite creative in her writing, and I appreciated most of her choices. And once again, Mara and Daniel’s sibling relationship was great. I really liked Mara and Jaime’s friendship and banter. I always love when an author values their platonic friendships.

There’s great humour scattered through all the dark bits to lighten the story. It’s one of the highlights of the trilogy, and has been pretty consistent throughout. Mara’s narration is darkly funny and sarcastic as always. But I did make sure he was dead before I took his eye. Too much hesitation I could barely watch as I did it. What is it with this girl and scalpels? I felt kind of bad about it, honestly. She is full on creepy and badass.When I say she becomes a real villain, I mean it. But because this is fiction, I choose Mara and her chaos-bringing badness. Honestly, if this story were real, I would support their end goal (if not their means). They made complete sense and I understood where they were coming from. When we discovered the villain behind everything, the cruel person orchestrating this whole horrible affair, I felt torn.

Also, Dr Kells’ reasoning makes her a much better, more complex – even pitiful – antagonist than before. I don’t want to give too much away, so I’ll leave it at that. More than anything, this is a pure villain story, and it gets wonderfully dark. It was really gripping as all the pieces came together from the past, and Mara shed her humanity and came fully into her anti-heroine role. I devoured the crazy, tense roadtrip format of this novel.

The unbecoming of mara dyer summary