The Unbecoming Of Mara Dyer – Michelle Hodkin

The Unbecoming Of Mara Dyer
Michelle Hodkin
Simon & Schuster
2011, 452p
From my TBR shelves

Mara Dyer wakes up in hospital coming out of a coma. She has no memory of how she got there or what happened prior to being taken there. All she is told is that her and her friends were in an accident after they crept into an old condemned building to spend the night. Mara is miraculously unharmed, but her best friend Rachel, other friend Claire and her boyfriend Jude, Claire’s brother, are not so lucky.

Now Mara and her family are moving to Florida for a fresh start. Mara has been plagued by a sort of post-traumatic stress disorder since the accident. She sees the face of Claire in the mirror, she sees Jude in the street, she has nightmares, hears voices. And now, she’s starting to see the deaths of other people before they happen. Terrified she’s going crazy, Mara struggles to keep it all together, to prevent her family from seeing just how stressed and terrified she is. If they knew the extent of her hallucinations and weird visions, they would place her in a psychiatric facility for sure. Mara knows she’s already caused her family a lot of stress and worry and she doesn’t want to add to it.

With all the craziness, the one bright spot in Mara’s life has become Noah, the gorgeous, aloof and sought after boy from her new high school, who has popped up in her life from the time she started at the school. Resistant at first, Mara isn’t a match for Noah’s charm and his way of infiltrating himself into her life, although she’s confused about why he wants her, when he can have anyone at their exclusive school. But as she gets further sucked in to Noah’s world, she starts to learn things about him. Noah isn’t exactly what he seems, either. Mara knows that she needs to keep her secrets from him but it’s so hard, especially when it seems like he might just be the one person who understands and can help her. Mara will have a terrifying choice to make, one that could cost her everything, including the beautiful boy she has come to hold so dear to her.

This novel has been generating a steady buzz of late and it’s something I’ve been wanting to read for a little while now. My local library didn’t seem to be any closer to getting it in so I picked it up from my local bookstore when I was in there getting another book I’d ordered in. I didn’t waste much time diving into it, reading it well into the night to get it finished. It’s not often I stay up until almost 2am reading these days, but a combination of my husband being at work until 1am and not being able to put this down meant that I got it finished.

There was a part of me, that even as I wanted to read this, was also rolling my eyes and going ‘hmm, not another coma novel’ because they seem popular at the moment. But Mara Dyer really isn’t one of those. Yes, it starts off with her awakening from one, and not remembering what happened to land her in hospital. But from the moment she’s out of hospital, it becomes apparent that it’s not really about the coma and amnesia itself. It’s all about the why.

There’s always a bit of a danger with finally reading books like these. They have beautiful covers, they have hype, they have a little something that has everyone in love with them. And for me, while there were things that had me unable to put it down, there were also a few things (well okay, mostly one) that didn’t work for me.

I’ll start with what did – Mara. I felt that she was easy to connect with as she pieced her way through her grief for her fallen friends, and also tried to come to terms with the fact that she just might be going a little crazy. She sees her dead friend Claire in the mirror, she sees her former boyfriend Jude, she hears things, she suffers hallucinations. All of these are very well written and Mara’s narrative reads like a girl who is coming apart at the seams. Her thoughts are frantic and disjointed, she’s struggling to present a front to her family and also the students at her new school. She wants to be normal, to fit in, to not be the crazy girl who sees dead people (including some people that aren’t even dead yet). I enjoyed Mara and all her problems, I liked her relationship with her family, especially her older brother, who she is especially close to. And I loved the end.

What didn’t work for me at the beginning and to be honest, throughout almost all of the book, was Noah Shaw, the incredibly hot, rich supposed-manwhore who latches onto Mara when she starts at her new school. Of course Mara is the only girl he’s ever truly had feelings for (even though they actually know nothing about each other and have barely spoken before all this comes out) and his ‘wooing’ of her as such is mostly just enigmatic looks, thinly veiled sexual innuendo and being a bit of a dick. There’s a fine line between hot, distant guy that makes you swoon and a jerk. And unfortunately, Noah basically comes across as a huge jerk. There’s an interesting twist involving him later on in the book that kind of almost redeems him as he mostly stops acting like a total tool when Mara succumbs to his charms, but the journey there is not enjoyable.

Luckily the ending (unsurprisingly, given there’s going to be a sequel) was epic – had me rethinking everything I’d sort of settled on in terms of the book and I can’t wait for the sequel now. Everything changed at the end and I really can’t wait to see what happens next regarding what Mara discovered.

8/10

Book #17 of 2012