Review: The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin

Book: The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin
Published by Simon & Schuster; September 2011
452 pages
Format: Hardcover
Genre: YA/Paranormal
I bought this book

Synopsis via Goodreads:

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 was really on the fence about Mara Dyer. It had heard two things about the book before I read it:
 
1) It was amazing

2) It was weird

Until recently, I haven’t done well with weird (thank you Doctor Who for expanding my horizons) so I was very skeptical. But I didn’t have to worry. Once I finished the book, I knew that this one would be one I would love from the very first page. I couldn’t put it down. I finished it in just over five hours which prompted the bf to tell me that I was “fucking ridiculous” (he meant it in an impressed, loving way). It’s a book that sucks you in to the point where I didn’t even want to stop reading to find a more comfortable spot because I needed to know what was going to happen next. 

I love Mara. She has had something strange happen to her that she couldn't really remember and most people walk on eggshells around her. But I love that she's smart and a bit sarcastic, and wants to know what really happened. 

Then there's Nate. I really love Nate. He's my favorite character in the whole book and I love how his friendship with Mara really develops and grows over the course of the book. There's a wonderful exchange between the two of them when Mara finds out that Nate family has money. It surprises Mara and she says to him, "How was I supposed to know you were rich? You dress like a hobo." It made me laugh so hard. 

Odd things happen around the two of them, which I really liked. It was great to read a book that was so suspenseful and creepy but also made me laugh. In addition to the mystery of what really happened to Mara, her father is the defense attorney in a famous murder trial which has the whole community in an uproar. 

There is just so much happening!! The book ends on the most amazing cliffhanger, which just about broke my heart and made me so excited for the sequel. I cannot recommend you read this book enough!