Review: The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin

The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin. 
Page count: 452
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Release Date: September 27th, 2011
Format: Hardcover
Who I'd Recommend it To: Fans of angsty romance, teen psychological thrillers.
Rating: ★★★ 1/2


Synopsis from Goodreads: 
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.

                                                                                                                  

Review: (Warning: Slightly spoiler-y stuff)

My thoughts on this book can be summed up with these gifs.

So, yeah. Basically. But let's get on with the proper review, shall we?

The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer is a psychological thriller. The first one I've read, actually, so I was pretty damn excited. As soon as  I read page one, it had my full attention. At the start of the book, Mara wakes up in a hospital with no idea how she came to be there. She gets told she was in an accident -- one that her friends and boyfriend were killed in. She's the only survivor. Throughout the book, crazy stuff starts to happen (that's the understatement of the year). Mara keeps on seeing her dead friends and hearing them calling her. She hallucinates, then wakes up hours afterward. We barely ever get to know what is a hallucination or not (until afterward), so the whole time you're pretty much like "WHAT?! WHAT?! WHAT IS HAPPENING?" With all crazy stuff happening, you really have to concentrate whilst reading this book, or else you're going to miss something important. It was such a cool and super creepy concept, though. The hallucinations were the freakiest thing ever. SO CREEPY. So great.

Now on to the characters. I sorta have a love/hate relationship with our protagonist, Mara. At times, she has a really great attitude. She could be hilarious and snarky, and I felt bad for her situation. But other times, I just wanted to yell at her poor decision making skills and her utter stupidity. There's Noah, the love interest, a bad boy (well, I don't know if you'd call him a bad boy but WHATEVER.) He was pretty great, not gonna lie. And there's a very awesome twist with him at the end! Very unexpected. Me like-y. With that said, I did really like their relationship, but it slowly became the centre of the book, which I didn't really appreciate. I'm all for romance, usually. I love romance, but I didn't think this was a book that needed so much of it. At times, I felt like it kind of got carried away and I wanted to get back to the freaky hallucination stuff.

The supporting characters were great. I loved Mara's brothers, and Jamie. The writing is quite good, the book is very fast-paced, and I adored how the author kept the reader guessing. There were so many 'WTF' moments. It was ridiculous. I never suspected anything. The ending shocked me. I didn't see that one coming whatsoever. AND THAT CLIFFHANGER. OH MY GOD. I might have been staring at the last page for about ten minutes or so, hyperventilating.

Overall:  The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer is dark, creepy and you never know what's going to happen next. It leaves you on the edge of your seat. A little frustrating at times and there was a bit too much romance, but good nonetheless. You're either gonna love or hate this one. After one hell of a cliffhanger, I'm definitely looking forward to The Evolution of Mara Dyer!