Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Review of The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin

Title: The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer
Author: Michelle Hodkin
Format: Ebook
Release Date: September 27th, 2011
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing
Source: RAK (Aparajita @ Le' Grande Codex)
Pages In This Edition: 452
Rating: 4/5 Stars (More like a 4.5...)

On the Cover:

Beyond the cover:

Summary 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."

Review:

I had HUGE expectations going into this one. HUGE. I've seen so many amazing things about this book around blogs, and the buzz for the last three months leading up to the release date was just insane. Everyone wanted their hands on this one. So when Aparajita @ Le' Grande Codex was kind enough to send me the book, I was so excited I might have burst. Really. It was a close one.


I'm happy to say that I wasn't disappointed. Now I'm not going to flip out and say that this was my favorite book of all time, or even of this year. But The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer is definitely worth your time and attention.


The plot is great! You never know what's happening until it's happening. The main question surrounding Mara has you going back and forth; you think you know what you're seeing, you think you know what's going on, but then the truth is revealed you realize that even if you had figured out some of it, all of it is just beyond your reach.

The main reason I enjoyed the book though is because of the male protagonist: Noah Shaw. He is one of the best male characters I've read in a long time. Though he is amazingly charming and handsome and dream-worthy, he also has some depth. (I've noticed that most of the male protagonists in YA lately have been lacking in any other trait besides being gorgeous.) So I was happy to see that Noah had his own opinions, his own story, and especially, his own backbone! The British accent didn't exactly have be turning away either....

The only thing I had a problem with in this book was Mara herself. Maybe it's just me, but it seems like she has problems making some simple conclusions. Sure the plot had some twists had even had me guessing, but there were some things that seemed easy to figure out that Mara couldn't see. I might be being too picky here.

Overall, The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer was a great read with heart-pounding action, and a guy that I certainly wished I had in my back-pocket. ;)

--Alexis

4 comments:

Kimberly @ Caffeinated Reviewer said...

looks interesting.
http://www.kimbathecaffeinatedbookreviewer.blogspot.com/

Anna @ Literary Exploration said...

So I'm about 20 pages away from finishing and I am DYING!!!! I need to finish this one RIGHT NOW! :)

Anna @ Literary Exploration

Elizabeth @ COQ said...

How does this compare to "The Adoration of Jenna Fox"? Have you read that one? I've heard some buzz on the web about serious plot similarities. I read Jenna Fox, our copy of Mara Dyer is still out.

Alexis Ladig said...

I've heard the same thing, but I haven't read Jenna Fox yet.

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