Review--The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin

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.

Wow. Just...I can't even describe my feelings right now after reading Michelle Hodkin's The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer. And I think I get it. I get why people were over the moon for this book! It was so mysterious, so incredible! And the ending?! Just wow!

I think the first thing I struggled with the most was the little letter we get at the beginning of the book. Where our heroine basically says she's not Mara Dyer, but yet, when reading the story, that's the name she uses. That's the surname of her family, so I struggled a bit with that. So I guess this entire story is her recollecting her thoughts or something? I don't know, it was just that little letter bit kind of threw me for the beginning of the story, but soon I just pushed it out of my mind and went to enjoy the actual story in front of me.

We know our heroine as Mara Dyer, she just went through something traumatic that caused the death of her best friend, her boyfriend and his sister, and yet she was the only survivor. We don't know what happened and Mara is struggling to get back to real life. Her family moves to Miami in hopes for a new start and that is where Mara meets Noah.

Noah is the school's playboy you could say. He's been with nearly every girl there and now his sights are set on Mara. Mara isn't too thrilled with him either. You got to love that no insta-love factor. But there is something between these two, for Noah can't seem to stay away. And Mara would be a liar to admit that she didn't think there was something there to him as well. She draws pictures of the boy for goodness sakes! Sure enough these two tangled with each other throughout the book before a relationship of sorts is formed.

But that's not what drew me into the story. It's the fact that there's something going on with Mara. The doctors says it's PTSD, but it has to be something more than that. She has nightmares that are more like memories of what happened that night her friends died. But then she sees things during waking hours that just should not be there. Strange things happen around Mara and she is obviously at the center of it all, but she can't seem to figure it out. And it seems like Noah may know something as well, for whenever things get weird or intense, he's there for her.

Strange doesn't even begin to cover this story! But I say strange in the most delighted way! I have always been a fan of the weird and strange! The mystery is what really gets me going with this. And it's in the last quarter of the novel or so when we finally get some answers, not a lot, but we scratch the surface of them at least and it's just enough to appease my inquiring mind! And that ending...oh that ending really antes up the tension and presents even more questions! Luckily I have the next book at the ready but I will be in trouble after I finish that one because the final book doesn't release until November! 

The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer was a most intriguing read and I am ever so excited to read more to see what happens to this strange girl not named Mara and the strange things that seem to happen around and to her! If you're looking for a read filled with deep mysteries and intrigue than I highly recommend this one!


Overall Rating 4.5/5 stars--again, it's that letter in the beginning that threw me and caused a bit of confusion for a few pages before I just let it go! Let it go, let it go! (couldn't resist!)