Review - The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin

Title: The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer

Author: Michelle Hodkin

Series: 1st in series

Pages: 452

Published: September 27, 2011 by Simon and Schuster

ISBN: 9781442421769

Source: Around The World Tours

Description: 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 Give This ...

 

I think I'm being a little generous giving this 4 stars.  But, I really don't feel like it was a 3 either.  It has potential, a really interesting paranormal aspect, and a great psychological undertone.  But, it also has it's drawbacks.

 

I felt like Mara's character was really well drawn out at first.  We open with after the event that has killed 3 of her friends and left with no memory of the entire night of the accident.  But you can tell she is traumatized by what has happened.   Her parents have moved her far away in hopes that a fresh start can help her cope and get on with her life.  But, what they don't know is that Mara is on the edge.  I think PTSD is just the beginning of what was wrong with her.  And as she gets little flashbacks of what happened that night, things really start to unravel.  

 Mara starts to have hallucinations, and they aren't very pleasant.  Her deceased friends appear in front of her at random moments along with other odd events.  On top of that, her tidbits of memory are leading her to believe that things weren't so happy between her friends/boyfriend and herself.  The more she thinks about all of this, the more stressed she gets.  And it seems the more stressed she gets, the more she hallucinated.  She's trying to hide this from her family and deal with being at a brand new school were she's attracted some unwanted attention.

Which leads us to Noah.  He's drawn to Mara (of course he is) and he's not use to being told no.  I really didn't like him at first, but in this case he reputation didn't really mix with the person he really was (although, I don't think it was all false either).  I liked him after he really started to show Mara who he really was.  But, I hated how the romance took over the story.  I'm glad they had a connection and in the end I think Noah could really help her move forward.  I wanted the psychological and paranormal to take the focus of the story because they really were fascinating. 

I'm not sure were the story is going at this point.  I'm hoping that the awesome part of the story begins to take a center seat.  I don't mind romance, but this one it really overpowered the better part of the story.