First, congrats to fellow Bookanista Gretchen McNeil on the release of POSSESS!!!!!!!
Now, my review of THE UNBECOMING OF MARA DYER
WHAT IT’S ABOUT:
Mara Dyer doesn’t think life can 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 mysteriously unharmed.
There is.
She doesn’t believe that after everything she’s been through, she can fall in love.
She’s wrong.
WHAT I THOUGHT:
I couldn’t wait to get my hands on ever since I met Michelle at BEA in 2010 and heard about her sale! Even though I still had to wait a torturous year to read, I was able to snag a copy a this year’s BEA (well, actually I got it at the Teen Author Carnival). I immediately devoured it.
I had super high expectations for this book. IT LIVED UP TO EVERY ONE OF THEM!
I got sucked in from the first page and couldn’t put the book down. The prose. The mystery. And, oh yeah, NOAH.
I’ll tackle these topics backwards because Noah is the one I want to discuss the most. He’s British. So right there I was hooked. And that doesn’t even take into account his sexiness. He’s cocky yet sweet, and I loved that I kept guessing as to his true intentions and motives. The ones I got surprised me and made him even more exciting. There’s really only one word to describe him: EXTRAORDINARY. I’ll be shocked if every girl that reads this book doesn’t fall madly for him. My favorite thing about him was the way he befriended Mara’s younger brothers. And of course, a guy who takes care of animals is automatically adorable.
As for the mystery, it kept me guessing and frantically turning pages. There were so many twists that made me gasp out loud, but in the end they tied everything together perfectly. This book is a new breed of paranormal and it read like a breath of fresh air. I was as eager to find out what happened in Mara’s past as I was to uncover what was going on in her present. In her past, Mara walked away unscathed while her best friends perished in a building collapse. The flashbacks provided the answers to questions like “why were they in an old building?” and “how did she survive?” and my favorite part was the subtle dynamics between Mara and her friends. It definitely wasn’t what it first seemed at the start of the novel.
In the present, strange things are happening (that sentence is vague, yes, but only because I want you to experience the ride for yourself). Mara makes new friends, ones I wasn’t sure she could trust, but each with a distinct personality. Her brothers were my favorite in the book! (Well, besides Noah, of course). And Mara herself is a great protagonist. She’s a balance mix of vulnerability and strength, ballsy but sometimes needing to be rescued. And she’s smart too. I cared about what happened to her just as she cared about those around her. I’m not an animal person but one of my favorite scenes involves her rescuing a dog.
And of course, the prose is beautiful. The only thing that kept me turning pages was stopping to savor a gorgeous sentence!
But gah! What a cliffhanger! Now I have to wait even longer for book 2!
CHECK OUT WHAT THE REST OF THE BOOKANISTAS ARE READING THIS WEEK:
Elana Johnson revels in Write Your Book Now!- LiLa Roecker is gaga for Imaginary Girls
- Christine Fonseca celebrates Circle of Fire – with giveaway
- Shannon Whitney Messenger catches The Eleventh Plague – with giveaway
- Megan Miranda is transfixed by Between
- Shana Silver delves into The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer
- Corrine Jackson celebrates her “Blogiversary” by presenting YA Authors on Lessons Learned
- Stasia Ward Kehoe falls for the cover of The Fox Inheritance
Tags: bea, book reviews, bookanistas
August 26th, 2011 at 10:04 pm
Yay Michelle! And yay Noah!
[Reply]