Book Review: The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin
Michelle Hodkin- The Unbecoming of Mara DyerFormat- PaperbackSource- Review copyPublisher-Simon & SchusterSynopsis: 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 unharmed.There is.She doesn't believe that after everything she's been through, she can fall in love.She's wrong.Review: This was a surprisingly good read for a YA paranormal novel. It is loaded with suspense and a supernatural eeriness that heightened my intrigue and made it difficult to put the book down because I wanted to know what it was all leading up to.Mara Dyer awakes in a hospital bed with no knowledge how she and three friends ended up at a dilapidated asylum in the middle of the night. She also has no memory of how her three friends died and how she survived. At risk of institutionalisation and causing much concern among her family for her mental health, Mara agrees to a change of scenery and the family relocate fromRhode IslandtoFlorida. Mara hopes to escape from the hallucinations of her dead friends but even with a new start, Mara continues to see things that are not there.At a new school, Mara has to deal with the usual teenage dramas of the popular evil girl, nosebleeds in the middle of class, oh and seeing her dead friends in the school corridor. To add complexity, she is being stalked by the most popular boy in school, Noah who has a bad reputation (surprise, surprise) and his eye on Mara.This story does have the typically cliché adolescent love theme with the ‘beautiful bad boy’ (Noah) and the misfit girl (Mara) who against her better judgement can’t break away from the chemistry that sparks between them. I suppose what is a little different was that Noah actually comes to life as a well-rounded person with a past that put his present in perspective. I think unlike the Fallen and Hush, Hush series where the love interests are these mythical almost perfect beings, at least Noah has some very real faults. But similar to these series, there’s an ultimate purpose for Noah and Mara’s attraction as well.The story takes a turn near the end and completely threw me off, which made it so much more interesting. Plus there's a bit of a cliffhanger at the end as a teaser to what is to come in the sequel.The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer is a thrilling debut novel by Michelle Hodkin and fans of the Fallen and Hush, Hush series will certainly enjoy this story.
4/5 rating
Purchase book @
/