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.
That’s it. It’s done. I’m officially
on the heart transplant list after this book caused the implosion of my heart
in my chest and the explosion of it out my mouth in the form of rainbow vomit
all over the floor. I love this book. The book made me realize a couple of
tropes I adore, that I’ll be adding to my list.
In the end, this book is really just
what I needed after my last book. One of the biggest issues that bogged me down
in the last book I read, was what kept me reading this book during every inch
of free time I had just to finish it (seriously, I started a new job today and
every single second of free time had me reading this book like water in a
desert). The chapters were succinct, and the descriptions were both
heartwarming and terrifying at the same time. This book was a perfect mesh of
creep-topia and shoot-me-in-the-foot-love.
Starting with the creep factors
brings me to one of the new tropes I’ve realized I love. Broken, female,
protagonists. I love characters that are insane (literally
in-the-psych-ward-insane). Michelle Hodkin gave just the right amount of
schizophrenia in this book. I believed that Mara had PTSD and I believed the things
she saw. It was the little details that brought it all together. Starting and
ending with the Ouija board bit was so awesome and just Mara avoiding looking
in reflective surfaces was perfectly eerie. I had no idea what to expect, and
that was so refreshing and scary!
The love part brings me to another
trope. Opposites attract (cliché, I know). This one was a little different from
the usual “opposites attract love story,” however. They clearly liked each
other, but they fought it and just the way it was written was very opposites
falling for each other. I am just in love with Mara and Noah. They’re
perfection-incarnate. The things that Noah said to Mara towards the end of the
book when things were getting revealed made me die inside from warm and fuzzy
things. I think I could do a whole post on all the things absolutely pristine
about their ship and love (but I won’t).
Another thing that was done
amazingly in this book were the plotlines. There were clearly multiple
plotlines in the story and they all interlocked, but were clearly separate
lines. The love story. The mystery of the asylum. The murder trial. Clearly
separate, but oh so interwoven. It was amazing writing that Michelle Hodkin did
in The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer. I
feel like so often writers put too much focus on one plotline and the overall
story ends up flat. This story was 5D it was so deep.
Of course, every story has its flaws
and this one did have some toward the end. The story got very murky when Noah
wakes up Mara with the news about Joseph. I wasn’t sure if it was dream or not
until after Mara wakes up after the Mr. Lukumi bit. I was reading it and
thinking “is this all a dream?” and I
think it’s because Noah knocking on the window just came out of nowhere without
any good buffer. I wish the murder trial story mingled into the overall story
at least one time between that scene and the creepy phone call. It just needed
something. Then there’s the Mr. Lukumi part that was just weird. I felt like I
tripping or something, and it was just too rushed and weird.
After that, though, everything
started falling into place and truths were revealed and it was crazy! There
were just so many brilliant things going on in this book that they all far
outweighed the awkward flaws toward the end. I’ve wanted to read this book for
a long time and I am so happy I finally have because I absolutely loved it and
would recommend it to everyone (I already am).
XOXO Tia
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