Review: The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin

If you're quite active in the Booktube/Bookstagram community then you may have heard of this book The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer. It has rave reviews everywhere, and I can see why!

Mara Dyer is a 16 year old girl has just moved to another state folowing a horrific and tragic accident in which her best friend, boyfriend and boyfriend's sister all died. Struggling to cope with what has happened, her inability to remember what actually happened she starts to show signs of PSTD- hallucinating and feeling unstable and emotional.
As time goes on her hallucinations are becoming too much, they're becoming too real. What are they? What is happening to Mara? After a series of strange and coincidental events Mara starts to wonder if there is something seriously wrong with her... 

That's about as good of a quick synopsis I could give without spoilers to be honest! Firstly this book is young adult supernatural/contemporary fiction. So keep that in your mind if you're intrigued by this book because YA isn't for everyone.

I really enjoyed this book- I started getting a bit concerned about 20% of the way through because Mara has met this guy, an English boy called Noah who is of course dashingly gorgeous, and he is rumoured to be a total man-whore and a douche etc and he's just all over Mara like a sleaze so I was sat there thinking 'oh my god, if this story is going to be about how he sleeps with her and doesn't call her back I'm finishing this book and burning it' HOWEVER that is not what this book is and this isn't a spoiler, and if it is I think it's an important one to have in your mind so that you can really appreciate Noah from the start but the man-whore rumours, as far as I'm led to believe, are just rumours and he is a nice guy, So keep that in mind when reading this.
Once I realise that Noah is actually a good guy I really liked him (I'd spend about half it thinking he was arsehole!)
The relationship does get a little 'insta-lovey' as it's called- where he's saying all the right things and she just melts- but there wasn't TOOOO much of that within this book, there was just enough for me in fact.

The story unfolds and you're a little confused, I'm not going to lie. You're kind of left thinking 'what on earth is real' because Mara isn't really a reliable narrator- she can't remember what actually happened, she's losing her mind trying to piece things together and you're being taken along for the ride with her.
This book moves as such a fast pace so I literally could it put it down- I mean it, I went from 25% to 94% in four and a half hours. And it was after 2am and I had to leave the last 7% till the morning. But there are quite a few different things going on in the book- you have Mara trying to remember what happened, all the crazy things going on around her, her new budding relationship, her strained relationship with her mother, her father's job as a lawyer and defending an accused murderer- it's pretty packed!

I would recommend this book if you're familiar with young adult, if you just starting out with some supernatural- because although this is classed as a supernatural book and the supernatural elements I think are brilliant, I really loved those bis, there really wasn't as much as I thought there would be so I am hoping there will be a lot more in the second book.

I really feel like I could talk more about this book but I'll leave it here because the rest of these series will really complete this book more and questions that are still left unanswered

I gave this book a 4 out of 5 stars- knocking off a star because  I spend way too long thinking Noah was an arsehole and so I really didn't warm to him till much later in the book, and there could have been more supernaturally elements in there for me.

This book is part of a trilogy so this is left on a bit of a cliff hanger- but a really good one. Currently in the UK all three Mara Dyer books are 99p on Kindle




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