| Title: The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer |  |
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| Author: Michelle Hodkin | ||
| Genre: Paranormal | ||
| Publisher: Simon & Schuster | ||
| Elements: Ghosts, mystery, thriller | ||
| Series: Book 1 of the Mara Dyer series |
I didn't know what to expect when I read MARA. Was it a thriller with supernatural aspects? Psychological with an unreliable narrator, ala Justine Larbalestier's LIAR? Horror?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.
I remember anticipating its release like crazy, refusing to read anything other that the first paragraph. No reviews, no sneak peeks, no Teaser Tuesday excerpts. Nope, I kept myself in the dark, which with the internet available 24/7 was pretty hard to do.
Did all that pay off. I devoured the entire book. I ate up every word, every scene, every description. How much do I love that Mara's partly of Indian ancestry? These people who are of mixed ancestry are gorgeous, at least those I've met in real life. And how much do I love that she doesn't bother about her looks?
It's of two reasons. One, I believe Mara just doesn't care about her looks so much other than the usual, and two, it's to keep her identity secret. That's my favourite part, that I can't trust that what Mara describes is the whole and actual truth. For all I know, she's not actually part Indian, her father isn't a lawyer etc etc. It's insanely fun.
I can't lie, I'm a huge fan now. The characters are all fun to read, even Mara's best friend, who does seem like the all around gossip whose sole purpose is to report of Noah's past and current activities. Noah and Mara do have some chemistry, though those relationships that start off with bickering and end up with make out sessions seem subpar compared to the Katy and Daemon scale of hotness.
The supernatural aspect was made all the more twisted when you add Mara's increasing loss of control, and there were some scenes where I genuinely feared for Mara's sanity, and everyone else's life. The events were tied together well, with threads that led naturally from one plot point to another. Hodkin knows how to leave her readers in suspense, dangling some information here and there, then upping the stakes to some pretty scary places that I didn't think she would go, but was made all the better for having occurred.
READ IT.
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