The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
2.5 stars I think I don’t even know TBH.
Dear Mara Dyer… I think you and I might have a love/hate relationship.
In The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer, Mara has just been through a traumatic event that took the lives of her best friend, her boyfriend and his sister and she doesn’t remember it. She’s determined to move on with her life though and so her family moves to a new town seeking a normal life.
What did I love? First, the cover. It’s gorgeous and the main reason I’ve had this in my ‘to read’ pile forever. I should be honest, that’s not the only reason. Friends of mine loved this book so there’s that too.
Sometimes I even really enjoyed the relationship and the banter between Mara and Noah…
“You have such a filthy mouth.”
Does it bother you?” I smiled, pleased by the thought.
Noah grinned and shut the door behind me. “Not in the least.”
The dialogue was really well written for the most part and the writing was done well, and I even liked the plot of the story.
I this this is where my like/love parts ways…
The things that I took issue or disliked in this story weren’t enough to get me to stop reading the book, but they were significant enough for me to really need to think about how I really felt about the story. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. If I love the characters in a story, I can overlook world building and certain other things that others might take issue with. And I think that is where I struggled with this book. The characters, mainly the heroine, irritated me.
But let’s start with everyone else in this book first. Her parents… I really loved that there was no sordid story there – they were loving parents to her… that were never really around when she really needed them.
Her brother Daniel. Ever wonder what the perfect brother would be like, well this is it. He’s absolutely p-e-r-f-e-c-t. Perfect grades, perfect son, perfect friend, perfect brother… and if that doesn’t irritate the crap out of you, you must not have brothers LOL. At times I felt that he acted way to fatherly towards Mara, and I get being the big brother, but always running interference for Mara on every single thing in her life, well, that just makes for a pathetic heroine in my eyes.
Jamie, Mara’s new best friend… if Hodkin could have crammed one more stereotype into his character I’d have been surprised. Let’s see, he’s black, he’s bi, he’s Jewish, he has dreads, a tongue ring, and he’s adopted. I think for the most part I wasn’t even sure what his purpose was to the story because he’s there and then… he isn’t. What I thought he was going to be there for the videotape of her Spanish exam  he wasn’t, and he doesn’t even make a reappearance later.
Mara’s Spanish teacher… I can’t even remember her name to be perfectly honest, but from day one, she’s on Mara’s ass. Harassing her, throwing chalk at her, and ridiculing her in front of classmates and just didn’t see the purpose or the reasoning behind it. It didn’t appear that she did this to other students, so why Mara? I didn’t get it and it seemed like just a means to an end to reveal something about Mara’s ‘skill/talent?’ LOL I’m not sure what to call it.
Let’s move on to Noah please… Noah is your typical bad boy- at the ripe old age of seventeen he’s a player and has dated all the hot girls at school AND because he’s ridiculously rich and good looking, he gets away with everything. Oh – he also has a English accent… and he drives a prius and loves animals. O_o Apparently all this combined into one man/boy makes girls stupid…
“Why did you sleep with Jamie’s sister?” I blurted. Completely graceless. I wanted to punch myself in the face.
…
I knew I should care about his answer. I knew that what Jamie had said meant something – that I was, and had been, a foolish girl who coveted something many girls had coveted and paid for before, and that I would pay soon. I should haul back and smack him, strike a blow for feminism or something or at the very least, get out of the car.
But then his thumb traced my skin and without realizing it, I leaned toward him and rested my forehead against his. Noah’s lids dropped at my touch.
…
I knew I should care about his answer. I knew that what Jamie had said meant something – that I was, and had been, a foolish girl who coveted something many girls had coveted and paid for before, and that I would pay soon. I should haul back and smack him, strike a blow for feminism or something or at the very least, get out of the car.
But then his thumb traced my skin and without realizing it, I leaned toward him and rested my forehead against his. Noah’s lids dropped at my touch.
UM…. What?? Not only do you want to punch yourself in the face, I also want to punch you in the face.
So this leads me to Mara, our heroine. I don’t know what to say about her. I didn’t hate her, but I also didn’t like her. Maybe I should just leave it at that… she made stupid choices and did stupid things.
Things happen in this book that aren’t really fully explained and wrapped up, which is a pet peeve of mine. I can’t go into them here because I’m not really sure if it’s considered spoilerish because … I don’t really know their impact on the overall story because… again this story isn’t wrapped up in this book. Hodkin does something that as a reader, I completely despise. She leaves this book with a GINORMOUS cliffhanger. I think that there was a lot of room for the author to explore the details that I was interested in instead of focusing on the romance/relationship of Noah and Mara, and while I get that that is important, it shouldn’t have been the focus of this book. I’d rather have had answers and resolution to some of the plot points instead of the UST that was supposed to be there.
I guess the big thing for me here was that I basically disliked the characters of this book. I didn’t care enough about them to like the story.
If you like unbelievable, sexy, bad boys and kind of ridiculously dumb female leads, and a cliche filled romance with very little plot progression and a lot of questions that are left unanswered… maybe this book is for you. Me… I’m not sure I’m going to continue with this series. I’ve heard the second book also leaves off on a cliffhanger as well, and that’s not how I roll. Give me a full story arc in each book that makes sense please and thank you.
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