Title: The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer
Author: Michelle Hodkin
Genre: Young Adult
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
Publication Date: September 27, 2011
Hardcover: 464 pages

Where’d I Get It: Purchased

Synopsis (From 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.

My Thoughts: You know those books that are talked about and spotlighted and there’s so much hype that every time you turn around you’re hearing about the bloody thing…so you buy it because OHMIGOSH everyone loves it…and then it SUCKS?  Yeah, this isn’t one of those books.  The hype was there, the twittery fluffy hyper flurry of crazy talk was there, and the book kind of lived up to it.  Was it perfect? No.  Was it pretty awesome, anyway? Yes.

The funny thing is, I didn’t buy this book until I received an ARC of the second one.  I kind of felt like I might as well read the first so I could read the second, and, well, here we are.

To be honest, I had some mixed feelings about the book as I was reading it.  There’s a lot of backstory, but not a lot of action. However, Michelle Hodkin’s writing is such that I really didn’t care. As a reviewer, I was aware of the lack…but as a reader I was engaged enough with what I was reading that it just didn’t affect the experience.  I wanted to know more, I wanted to keep reading, and I got frustrated every time I had to put the book down.

As a busy woman with a 14 month old little boy who is constantly on the go and a house that seems to always need cleaning and errands that always need running…for me to want to just block everything out and read is pretty rare nowadays.

One of my favorite parts of the book is that the story is so FRESH.  It’s not just the same old YA story parroted back in a slightly different style with renamed characters and a few frilly details tossed over to camouflage the lack of creativity – it’s ACTUALLY a good, new, exciting story. Yay!

This book makes you run the gauntlet of feelings and I sympathized with Mara so.very.much. as we got further into the book.  I became invested in the characters and in the story and boy was I glad that I had the second book in the series to start immediately after.

As I write this, I’ve already finished the second and I am wishing I’d waited to read both of them til the third was out..but, alas, I did not. And I will have to sit and stew and think and wait…

You can better believe, though, that if I don’t receive an ARC, I’ll be buying it the day the thing’s available. This story rocks.

Buy it. Buy 2 and give one to a friend.  Just make sure you read it.

Rating: 4.5 of 5

Series: Mara Dyer, Book 1 | Second: The Evolution of Mara Dyer (Review To Come)| Third: TBR November 4, 2014 The Retribution of Mara Dyer