The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer by[/caption]Details:
Series: Mara Dyer
Pages: 480
Edition: Kindle
Publisher/Date: Simon & Shuester (October 2011)
Price: $7.99 at Amazon
★★★★★★★★☆☆
The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer had me questioning my own sanity. Is this really happening? Is Mara crazy? The book balances between the believable and the unbelievable in a way that keeps the reader second guessing through the end.
Waking up in a hospital bed, Mara learns she’s been involved in an accident – a building collapsed. Although she’s relatively unscathed, her friends – including Mara’s best friend, Rachel, and her boyfriend, Jude – didn’t make it out. Mara doesn’t remember anything.
Hoping a change of scenery will help Mara heal, her family relocates to Florida. Much to Mara’s annoyance, she’s handled with kid gloves – especially by her psychologist mother – and watched closely to make sure she’s progressing and not exhibiting signs of further mental instability. Unfortunately, it’s going to be hard to look normal when she starts seeing things that can’t possibly exist, including her ex-boyfriend, Jude. And then she starts remembering the night of the accident...
What I really liked about this book – as I said before – I never truly knew if what I was reading was real or Mara’s hallucinations from PTSD. Being told from Mara’s perspective, I was limited to what she saw (or thought she saw), but that was just enough to keep the mystery evolving naturally. I never felt like information was intentionally left out or obfuscated by obnoxiously cagey characters to force “surprise” into the plot.
Mara was likable and funny, but a bit frustrating. Too often I found myself yelling, “If you don’t want to get committed to the crazy hospital before you figure out what’s going on with you, start at least pretending to act normal!” Well, I didn’t really yell that out loud. Yelling at my Kindle would make me look kind of crazy.
Mara’s nerdy older brother, David, and interesting young brother, Joseph, kept me laughing. David was pretentious, but only in ways that made him lovable. Instead of being the “annoying younger brother,” Joseph wore a business suit and discussed financials. They weren’t your typical siblings, and I loved that.
The love interest, Noah, was...I didn’t want to like him. I didn’t like him at first, but he grew on me. Like a cute, British fungus.
A few things I didn’t like:
Some parts were a little confusing. For example, the dream scene after Mara drinks a concoction to help her find out the truth, I wasn’t really sure if it was a dream or reality. Not in a good way, but in a way that I kept having to go back and re-reading things to make sense of them. Conclusions were derived and I found myself struggling to understand them because I wasn’t entirely sure what happened.
Mara’s parents were kind of dullards – especially her mother. Although her dad was a workaholic, he at least tried to be understanding and I think acknowledged his flaws. Her mother was passive aggressive and seemed like she just wanted to slap a crazy label on Mara’s head and ship her off to someone who could fix her.
Overall, I thought the book was pretty damn awesome and I was all sunshine and rainbows about moving on to the second in the series, The Evolution of Mara Dyer.
0 comments :