Noah Shaw

The Becoming of Noah Shaw

by Michelle Hodkin

SPOILER FREE
The Becoming of Noah Shaw, while being as wonderfully written as The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer series, carries a slightly different tone to it. This series, at least this book, really dives into the mentality of Noah, who is much more grounded in his reality though that alone comes with it's own darkness. This creates a more stable narrator though. Because there is the Mara Dyer series before this one too, the reader (should they read this after the Mara Dyer series) already knows about what is going on with the group, which also changes the tone of the novel from the first series. The great thing that this book does though, is that even as the reader has gained so much knowledge from the previous series, the pace of the story is still engaging and intriguing. We all thought that the answers were solved with the end of The Retribution of Mara Dyer, but here we find that it was only the tip of the iceberg.

The plot of the novel picks up almost immediately after the The Retribution of Mara Dyer, and I am not entirely sure that you can read this one without having read the others (The Unbecoming, The Evolution, The Retribution... of Mara Dyer). All of these books are fantastic though so, trust me, you won't regret reading them. Unless you get freaked easily... then you might. Coming back to this novel though, I think the plot is really well created: it is not the same as the previous books- there is no way that it could have been- but instead builds on it in a way that smoothly transitions from the last book to this one. We find out in this story that there is still so much that we do not know; but the pieces start to come into place in this book.

Another thing that was different in this book was the narration. I already touched on this, but seeing the story through Noah's point of view is vastly different from Mara's. All of the characters are slightly different, yet the same, now that they are seen through Noah's perspective, and holy moley does it make a difference. For me, the biggest difference was seeing Mara and her actions and words as opposed to being in her head. Also, she has some insane character development that kinda freaks me out, but I'm also looking forward to seeing more of.


This book is a great start to what I really think is going to be a great series. It is not the same twisty, dark, and psychologically freaky story as The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer series, but The Becoming of Noah Shaw still very chilling and darkly themed, which I love. Plus, Noah Shaw is there the entire freaking time.

Thanks for reading!