The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin

The book has a really dark cover so I'm afraid you can't read the title :/

First impression

I had never heard about this book before, and for that I have to thank Stacee from Adventures of a Book Junkie. While this could've been just another YA supernatural, the supernatural part was very different (for me). You do have the "oh I hate him, no wait I love him now" moment, but, I saw that one coming so it didn't make me roll my eyes. It was quite an enjoyable read, what can I say. Plus I was still surprised by a couple of things, so hey, not bad!

Final thoughts

Let's discuss the book a bit more comprehensibly. The main character, Mara, wakes up after being in a terrible accident. She is the only survivor and she has lost her best friend, boyfriend and his sister, but she can't remember anything of what happened. She does, however, have episodes of PTSD and depression, not that you could blame her. She asks for her family to move and they end up in Florida (see, this part made me purse my lips, because, as bad as what happened was it felt like a bit too much to ask and in a drop of a hat her family is on board, anyway) She is now in a new city, in a new school and turns out the moving is not really helping her PTSD so...not great.

Queue to cute, mysterious boy with British Accent, Noah. He has his eye on Mara but she wants nothing to do with him, because he has some reputation...and you know already they end up together.

But Caro, you say, where is the supernatural? Well, things point out that when Mara wants someone dead, really wants them to, they actually die. Just like that. Mara doesn't really intend to kill them and has no idea how to control this, but for some reason that hasn't been discussed yet, she can kill with thoughts.

So what did I like about the book. I liked the characters. Well most of them, but particularly Mara's family. And Mara is not bad herself. She didn't feel to me like the insufferable teen that has become so common in YA books. Yes, she is full of angst, but she had an actual tragedy and a creepy discovery about herself that makes it more than understandable for her to feel that way.

I liked the fact that the author doesn't over "teenify" the dialogues. Oh, I hate when for some reason authors just drop expressions that they seem to think teens use and the dialogue seemed like a parody of airheads. This wasn't the case for this book and that I appreciate.

The fact that both Noah and Jaime have interesting back stories was nice. I would like to learn more about them in the next book. And the fact that they are NOT in a love triangle with Mara made it even better. I am tired of the love triangle. Was I the only teenager not to have that? Anyway, I am giving it 4 stars because the pacing was nice, the slow building up to the story behind the accident was well carried, and because I liked the characters enough to want to continue reading the series. Not a full 5 stars because, while different, it did not blow me away.