The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer -Bizarre but amazing

The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin
Series: Mara Dyer #1
Published by Simon and Schuster ISBN: 9780857073648
on March 1st 2012
Genres: Young Adult
Pages: 464
My rating:
Check it out in Goodreads
Synopsis

Mara Dyer believes life can't 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 strangely unharmed. 

There is.

She doesn't believe that after everything she's been through, she can fall in love. 

She's wrong.

Mara wakes from a coma in hospital with no memory of how she got there or of the bizarre accident that caused the deaths of her best friends and her boyfriend, yet left her mysteriously unharmed. The doctors suggest that starting over in a new city, a new school, would be good for her and just to let the memories gradually come back on their own. But Mara's new start is anything but comforting. She sees the faces of her dead friends everywhere, and when she suddenly begins to see other people's deaths right before they happen, Mara wonders whether she's going crazy! And if dealing with all this wasn't enough, Noah Shaw, the most beautiful boy she has ever seen can't seem to leave her alone… but as her life unravels around her, Mara can't help but wonder if Noah has another agenda altogether…

"Haunting and dreamlike... the intrigue and romance will inescapably draw you in" - Cassandra Clare, bestselling author of The Mortal Instruments series.

Mara Dyer surprised me indeed. I’d seen this book around the bookish community since forever. I’d added it to Goodreads but for some reason, never read it. Until now. What a damn shame.

It starts out interesting, leaving me quite hooked, and then it turns… predictable. And let me tell you, this scared the crap out of me because it’d seemed so promising. You’ve got the new girl at school and a handsome mysterious high school guy who seems oh so taken with the new girl who doesn’t even socialize with anyone.

Sound familiar?

Just like any good ol’ YA out there.

But I didn’t let it go. How could I? When for every cliche I encountered in the begginning, the mystery of Mara Dyer grew and I just couldn’t stop reading. After some chapters, cliches became smarter. I have no idea if it was intentional but I was so so happy to see that some things that I thought would happen in a certain way, developed in another.

Well done, book.

It ended in a cliffhanger that would’ve killed me if I hadn’t had the second book on hand.

 

The Evolution of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin
Series: Mara Dyer #2
Published by Simon and Schuster on October 29, 2013
Genres: Young Adult, Family, Mysteries & Detective Stories, Social Issues, Social Themes, Paranormal, Paranormal
Pages: 560
My rating:
Check it out in Goodreads
Synopsis

Mara cannot remember anything about the night her friends died. All she knows is what she's been told: they went to an abandoned asylum, the building collapsed, and only Mara survived. Two months later, Mara is eager to move forward with her life in a new town, but that's easier said than done. A boy at school named Noah Shaw seems to know more about Mara's tragic past than she does. And to make matters worse, Mara is beginning to see people and things that can't possibly be there. Or can they? When Mara goes searching for answers, she discovers a secret about herself that is most unbecoming. A secret that promises a future full of destruction, pain, love, evolution, and, ultimately, retribution.

 

Applause again! Mara comes back recharged. The tension only escalated. And with everyone thinking Mara is crazy, with even she starting to believe that herself… I don’t know. Shit got real. It was super fun.

Sometimes the second book in a series can be utterly disappointing. In this case, it was even better than the first. Considering I spoiled myself with the first book, that could be just be, but I really liked the fact that it felt like it was almost everyone against Mara and Noah. Specially against Mara though.

 

The Retribution of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin
Series: Mara Dyer #3
Published by Simon and Schuster on November 4, 2014
Genres: Young Adult, Mysteries & Detective Stories, Social Themes, Death & Dying
Pages: 480
My rating:
Check it out in Goodreads
Synopsis

Mara Dyer wants to believe there's more to the lies she’s been told. There is.

She doesn’t stop to think about where her quest for the truth might lead. She should.

She never had to imagine how far she would go for vengeance. She will now.

Loyalties are betrayed, guilt and innocence tangle, and fate and chance collide in this shocking conclusion to Mara Dyer’s story. Retribution has arrived.

 

The Retribution of Mara Dyer was great. I liked how Mara changed. There was a lot of change in her character, and I liked that she finally stopped being scared and started owning her ability. It was fascinating to read about. The problem for me in this book was that I found myself not that emotionally invested in the things that were happening, compared to the first two books.

In the others, I was right there with Mara, worrying about people getting hurt, about no one believing her and her relationship with Noah. In this third book, it’s more difficult because after all she’s been through, Mara sort of snaps, which brings this change with it. Her responses to fear now are different. And while that’s good on some levels, it affected my ability to connect with her.

That said, this finale makes the series come full circle, and I liked that. I always love books that find the way to connect the beginning with the end in some way.

 

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All in all, I’m so glad I finally read these books after sooo long. It was totally worth it!

 

Is there a popular series it’s taken you forever to start reading?

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