Review: The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer-Michelle Hodkin

The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer
Series:book 1of 3
Genre:teen, mystery, romance
Pages: 480
Rating: four and a half stars

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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.
     After Mara survives the traumatizing accident at the old asylum, it makes sense that she has issues. She lost her best friend, her boyfriend, and her boyfriend’s sister, and as if that weren’t enough to cope with, her family moves to a new state in order to give her a fresh start. But that fresh start is quickly filled with hallucinations—or are they premonitions?—and then corpses, and the boundary between reality and nightmare is wavering. At school, there’s Noah, a devastatingly handsome charmer who seems determined to help Mara piece together what’s real, what’s imagined—and what’s very, very dangerous.
     This fast-paced psychological—or is it paranormal?—thriller will leave you breathless for its sequel,The Evolution of Mara Dyer.

“Thinking something does not make it true. Wanting something does not make it real.”


Before I began reading this, I thought it would take forever to read, which is why I started it early. I decided not to look up the synopsis and just go in blind. I don't know what I was expecting but this story hooked me. 

Mara Dyer doesn't remember what happened the night her two friends and boyfriend died. She wakes up in the hospital with nothing but a few bruises. She's confused about that night, and though she knows something happened that night, she has no choice but to continue on, trying to move past the mysterious circumstances of their death. 

Mara has gone through a lot. I liked how the mystery played out. It was confusing and I felt her fright with not being able to remember anything. Its like losing a whole night of your life, and that itself scares me. I wanted to know what happened just as much as she did. Mara is strong, even when she doesn't know it. Her world is crazy and I wanted to help her. 

“You always have a choice.” 

Noah is the guy she meets at her new school. Like any other young adult book, he's broody and mysterious, much like this story. I wasn't sure how to feel about Noah. It seemed like he was suspicious of something, so it was hard to trust him for a while. I do like how he was with Mara. He wanted to help her and convince her that she's a good person.

“Why do you always look like you just rolled out of bed?'
'Because usually I have.' And the way he raised his eye-brow at me made me blush.
'Classy,' I said.” 

Mara's family was odd. We don't read much about them. They're important to the story line, to Mara's development, but I would have loved to see her with them more. Daniel, her brother, seemed to be the closest to her, so it was nice to see that bond. 

I loved the mystery that surrounded Mara. Something is always happening to her, causing more mystery to appear and dig through. I tried to figure it all out but it was hard. That was somewhat annoying, that we really didn't learn anything at all in book one, besides the night of her friends death, which was great to finally figure out, but like I said, more secrets appeared. Mara's relationship with Noah was perfect though.

For some reason, there was a feel in this book. I was expecting more revelations about the plot, like I mentioned above, that didn't really come. I felt like there could have been more.

I'm finishing the third book now, so I'm glad that I finally read this series.

You should, too.

“I'd rather he not know the depths of my crazy.”