It’s always a sad day when you finish a series.

“The Retribution of Mara Dyer” by Michelle Hodkin is the third novel in a young adult trilogy about a teenaged girl who is the only survivor in a building collapse that killed her two best friends and her boyfriend.

After moving from Rhode Island to Florida, Mara notices something about herself that did not exist while she was in Rhode Island, which might be the key to the deaths of her friends.

In “The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer,” the reader meets her following the deaths of her friends, when she wakes up in the hospital and doesn’t remember how she got there until she finds out that she’s the only survivor of the accident. Mara moves and meets an interesting cast of characters that she has more in common than what she realizes. Also, someone from her past who she thought was gone

comes back.

In “The Evolution of Mara Dyer,” she tries to avoid the individual from her past and live a normal life, even though she’s in and out of mental facilities that are trying to convince her that her past is dead. Over the course of the novel, she realizes and understands more and more that she isn’t exactly normal, but has a genetic mutation that gives her and a few of her friends powers. Mara also has to deal with a woman who is trying to suppress her powers, but is harming Mara and her friends more than she is really helping.

The final book picks up right after the second book ends and Mara’s quest to get off the island she and her friends are stranded on, along with making sure her and her friends are safe from the people who are trying to harm them. As they get off the island and back onto the mainland, they all realize that in order to put an end to all of the bad things happening to them, they need to hunt certain people and documents down in order to live normal lives.

With a trip to New York City, along with some close calls with death, Mara and her friends are able to make their lives normal again, even with a deadly cost.

A romance with more focus on the paranormal and historic values of Mara’s family’s past, the series as a whole grabs your attention with the sarcastic wit. Matched with clever lines and pop culture references [and a well-timed Ebola joke that was printed before the outbreak happened — “What’s a little hemorrhagic fever between friends?”] that will always be relevant, it’s not hard to fall for Mara, Jamie or Noah and the banter the characters create during lighter moments in

the novel.

Needless to say, the series can have you on the edge of your seat or have you laughing along at the humor that sometimes suddenly appears in middle of a

grim situation.

If a reader is looking for a fast-paced read and a series that is completed, the Mara Dyer trilogy is a decent read for either Thanksgiving or winter break.