Review: The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer

The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Mara Dyer wakes up in a hospital not completely remembering the events that lead up to her hospitalization. Turns out she was in an abandoned/condemned building that collapsed on her and her 3 friends. Her three friends didn’t survive. Mara has to deal with the aftermath, and she is haunted by nightmares and hallucinations. Mara’s family moves to Florida to get a fresh start where she meets Noah…the campus playboy and he is smitten with her…making her an immediate enemy with every other girl in school. As Mara and Noah get closer, other really strange things start to happen, and Mara makes a startling and overwhelming realization.
Mara Dyer grabs you from the first page. You have to know what happened that caused the death of her friends! And as you are waiting for that to be revealed, other mysterious things start to happen which makes “The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer” so hard to put down.

Michelle Hodkin did a beautiful job of creating and fleshing out Mara. Mara had the same questions I did while reading the book and often thought the same things I did while reading it. I could really get into Mara because so much of her psyche and thought process were revealed. It was one of those time where you are almost convinced that Michelle must have had personal experience…know what I mean?

And Noah…the word “dreamy” comes to mind! Holy Hannah! He is a total Knight in Shining Armor, but a flawed one which made him all the more dreamy! In a word, I LOVE Noah!

There was a beautiful twist of an ending…that if we, the reader, had really stopped to think about, shouldn’t have been that surprising. There were clues as to what was coming, but we assumed that they were part of Mara’s “unbecoming”. Very tricky Ms. Hodkin, very tricky. This is definitely one of those books you can’t take at face value…there are a lot of things bubbling just under the surface!




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