The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer

Posted by Megsly in Book Bitch, Book Reviews, Dystopian, Featured | 2 comments

The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer
by Michelle Hodkin
reviewed by Megsly

Mara Dyer doesn’t believe 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 strangely unharmed. There is.

 She doesn’t believe that after everything she’s been through, she can fall in love. She’s wrong.

This is another one of those books where I saw the oh so pretty cover art and fell pray to the instant gratification of Amazon Kindle purchases (my bank account hates me…) Add in that the synopsis was about as vague as you could get and my interest was completely piqued.

The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer (seriously, how ominous is that title?) starts with a brief look into the “before,” when Mara was happy and when her friends were alive. They’re fiddling with a Ouija board, which is never good. One darkly disturbing message later, and we’re fast forwarded to the “after,” in which Mara is the only person left alive in her circle of friends. Her best friend Rachel, her boyfriend Jude and his sister Claire are all dead, crushed to smithereens (literally) in a building collapse that left Mara unconscious but otherwise unscathed. And she has absolutely no recollection of what actually happened.

Cue one severe case of guilt and confusion in our narrator. Depression sinks in, and darkness overtakes her life. Shortly thereafter, she’s diagnosed with a severe case of post-traumatic stress disorder and her parents quickly pack everyone up and move them to sunny Florida, where they hope the new faces, new sights, and new environment will help alleviate Mara’s PTSD and help her mind heal. However, the exact opposite happens. First day in school and Mara has a hallucination that would send me running as quick as I could in the opposite direction. And it’s only the first hallucination. Or is it even a hallucination? Barely hanging on by a thread, Mara retreats further and further back into her own mind. The only things keeping her halfway sane is her brother Daniel, and her new friend Jamie. An additional crazy thrown into her already insane box of crazy? Noah. But how could any girl not want to manage the crazy that is Noah?

I don’t want to go into much detail on the plot, because the mystery and intrigue of the book was a huge part of it’s charm. I had no idea what was really going on with Mara’s life. I was just as blindsided as she was with every twist and turn, and as her past slowly unraveled before her, I was just as stunned as she was,

The slow reveal of the truth is very evocative. In so many scenes within The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer, I found myself surprised or strongly affected by the characters actions. The need for Mara to succeed was a constant for me, I wanted to see her solve the riddles of her past, and as her character was developed and her internal turmoil further explored, I wanted to see her healed as well.

The secondary characters were really spot-on for me too. I loved Jamie and Noah, as well as Mara’s brothers and parents. They were all connected deeply, and even though the novel is filled with dark reminders of the evil that can plague us all, the characters proved as a consistent reminder that no matter how dark things are, love can get us through anything. Mara, though strong in her own was, is filled with doubts about her own self worth and her own mental stability. Add in some serious doubts about a new school and a new love interest, and she’s bound to have some serious issues plaguing her constantly, and that’s NOT including the fact that she hallucinates her dead friends on a regular basis. Yet, despite her entire basket of crazy, Mara has real friends. You learn to love Rachel, her deceased best friend simply through Mara’s recollections. And Daniel, who does everything he can to support his sister and give her the freedom she deserves, including lie to their very worried mother, is the big brother every girl wishes for. And then there’s Jamie, who just takes her under his wing from the moment she arrives and even though he has reservations about Noah, he supports Mara in so many ways.  Jamie makes my heart happy. 

And then we have Noah, who’s handsome, notoriously flirty, and has a nice lilting accent. But there’s so much more to him than I originally thought. I honestly find the rich, hot high school stud muffin routine over played in so many novels right now. But at the same time, I feel like the author pulled this off by giving Noah his own backstory that is just as mysterious and twisted as Mara’s. It makes sense that he would fall for her, and it would make sense that their love story would actually become something real. Some people have referred to Noah as a bad boy, but I definitely didn’t see bad boy in his characterization. Rich, over confident, smart ass teenager? Yes, definitely. Bad boy? Nah.

Which, in regards to the smart-assery, I have to say that The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer is totally chocked full of it. The dialogue between characters is witty and full of sarcastic banter, which I can understand would annoy some but for me, sarcasm is a natural defense so when I see characters who are wary and nervous resorting to sharp comments and sarcasm, I totally relate.

Now, I will say that the paranormal element in this book wasn’t blatantly obvious and honestly seemed to take a backseat to the story of the characters. But it was still there, and towards the end as you’re realizing how things are slowly revealing themselves to you, you come to understand just how prevalent the paranormal element really was throughout the novel. I think it was really well executed in the end!

Over all, I LOVED this book. SusanAshlea was with me on vacation while I was reading it and I think I nearly drove her insane with my “Seriously, Sue, you need to read this book,” comments. But hey, if she reads it then yay! And I hope you read it, too! Also, if you need another recommendation, what sealed my decision to read this book was because Veronica Roth, the author of Divergent, recommended it on her blog. I thank her for enticing me to read this!

Below is my rating of The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin. These are reflective strictly of my opinion of the novels I’ve read and reviewed, and not necessarily reflective of the other staff members of MVF.

Plot – 10
Character Development – 10

Grammar and Punctuation – 9
Prose – 9
Paranormal Element – 9.5

Total Score: 9.5/10

(Total score is derived from the average of the 5 individual scores)