Review: The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer

Title: The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer and The Evolution of Mara Dyer
Author: Michelle Hodkin
Genre: Thriller, Mystery, Paranormal
Series: The Mara Dyer Trilogy
Volume: 1

Why I Read It: Can we talk about the covers? The covers are so lovely and mysterious. For Unbecoming you can't really tell what is going on. I'm not typically fond of photo-covers, but these are so wonderfully atmospheric and suit the series well. So that's why. I also haven't heard anyone dislike the overall series.

A Quick Intro: Mara Dyer wakes up in a hospital, unharmed after a building collapse that killed her best friend, her boyfriend and her boyfriend's sister, with no memory of the accident. After she is released from the hospital, she and her family move to a new town without all of the memories. But the memories don't seem to want to let Mara go, and she's seeing and hearing things that aren't there. Her mind feels like its fragmenting, and she can't always tell what is real anymore.

What I Thought: I went through this one really fast. It is over four hundred pages, and I went through it in less than a day. It was suspenseful, and by the end, there were some scenes which I wasn't sure were real or not. There was a really sense that Mara may or may not have been losing her mind. We don't really get very many answers in this one. At the end of this one (trying to dance around spoilers here) I sort of reserved judgement on Noah. There are aspects of his character that I liked, and there are parts I wasn't so sure about- I would like to hear more about him, and he's certainly more of a mess than he lets on, so I would like  to hear more about that. (I'm speaking in some weird combination of past and present tense here, because I have since read The Evolution of Mara Dyer, and so know a little about what is to come).

A Fact: Mental illness is actually quite common- about one in five people will be affected by some form of mental illness at some time in their life.