On the Same Page | The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer | Michelle Hodkin

The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer • Michelle Hodkin

Guys, I was one of those people who’d never read THE UNBECOMING OF MARA DYER. I know. I’d heard good things, I’d heard great things, I’d heard meh things, but mostly I’d heard WTF JUST HAPPENED OMG things, and that got me excited. It didn’t disappoint. My mind was thoroughly screwed by the time I turned the last page. Like, BIG TIME. Like, WHATTTT DID I JUST READ. Isn’t that the best feeling?!

In direct contrast to this bananas book, I’m keeping it straightforward here and going to review town.

Mara Dyer believes life can’t 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 strangely unharmed.
There is.

She doesn’t believe that after everything she’s been through, she can fall in love.
She’s wrong.

GUYS. Ok. So, I devoured THE UNBECOMING OF MARA DYER. From the first intriguing pages to the last WTF pages, I loved it. The mystery, the twists, Mara, NOAH–it was so gripping. I loved it so much that I grabbed book 2 right away to keep reading. It had been a while since I read a good old paranormal story, and I loved the crap out of this one. THE CRAP, I TELL YOU.

So I loved the way this book began with that creepy letter “Mara” is writing to herself. It let me know right away that there was going to be some THINGS going on and it set the perfect tone. For me, it instantly called Mara into question: Who is she really? What happened? Is she telling the whole truth? I sometimes can’t get down with the unreliable narrator, but it made me very curious and instantly drew me in.

What hooked me? I would love to say it was the mysterious things that happen around Mara, but to be honest, the outcome of that wasn’t necessarily surprising to me. Well, it was at the beginning, and there were a few times when I was like, “OMG WTFFFFF!!!,” but what it all lead up to was probably the one thing in THE UNBECOMING OF MARA DYER that I was able to put together. (But, like, there’s LOTS of weird shit going on, so this didn’t spoil a thing.) What hooked me was the pace, the characters, and the relationships, and then the ending was just the final gust of wind that blew me right over. Most of you have probably already read this book because I was so behind the times, but GUYS. SO GOOD.

Really the only thing I knew about this series before I started reading it was Noah Shaw. Noah Shaw, he of the tobacco and ocean smelling mysterious vibes. I did love him so. And I LOVED the relationship between Mara and Noah. It was the perfect amount of angst and heat and swoons. I get it, guys. I get it now.

But so this ending. I can’t even with it. The action was insane, the twists were nuts, the BOMBS WERE GOING OFF ALL OVER THE PLACE, and I couldn’t put it down. I also really enjoyed the way Mara’s story tied in with a seemingly insignificant (at least at first) plot line near the end. I thought that was neatly done. If we’re doing real talk here, though, it was the very end that made my jaw drop. Like, ON THE FLOOR. Plus it brought a lot of things full-circle, so it was satisfying in that regard as well. BUT OMFG.

I’m so glad that I finally jumped into THE UNBECOMING OF MARA DYER! Alyssa told us that we would love it and that we needed to read it, and I’m DYING to keep reading this series. It’s like crack, and everyone loves some book crack, right? Right.

Don’t forget to check out Alyssa and Brittany‘s posts!