The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin

Summary:
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. (from GoodReads)

Review:
Ugh. This book. I did not like The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer at all. It looked so promising. The cover is beautiful, the title is intriguing, the summary is suspenseful. Even the prologue was interesting. But everything soon fell apart after that.

Like I just said, the beginning actually is good. Mara has no recollection of how she is in the hospital and how her friends died. It's a big mystery, and as the reader, I wanted to learn more. Luckily for us, Mara starts having flashbacks and memories are revealed in her dreams. Suddenly strange things are happening, like hallucinations, and part of me liked wondering if the paranormal stuff was real or if it was all in Mara's head.

However, as soon as Noah, our romantic interest, is introduced, the book starts to descend into mediocrity. He is creepily obsessed with Mara as soon as she starts at her new school, and made me think that he had ulterior motives (he actually does). By the way, the reason he wants to get to know Mara is kinda corny and felt like it was just thrown in there for the heck of it. But Noah is a notorious playboy and doesn't date the girls he sleeps with. But as soon as Mara comes along, Noah is ready to settle down because she is "different" and "special." Honestly, I didn't see what was that great about Mara.

On the other hand, Mara is just obsessed with Noah as he is with her. He's pretty much all she thinks about. Noah would also say and do annoying things, like demanding to drive her to school even though it was out of his way. Halfway through the book, the author forgot she was writing a paranormal mystery and started writing a plain old romance. Seriously, the middle of The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer is devoid of anything remotely paranormal, until the author remembered what she was writing.

The ending was a cliffhanger but even that wasn't enticing enough for me to suffer through the sequel. This is probably one of the few books where I have no interest at all in seeing what happens next, and I think that is quite the accomplishment. Suffice to say, I was very disappointed in The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer.

Rating: 4 out of 10.
FTC: borrowed from the library.

2011/Simon & Schuster/452 pages.