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A review by bookph1le
The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin
3.0
Full review to come later. For now, I'll just say that it started out really promising and creepy, began to peter out toward the end, and then just ended in an abrupt way that left me feeling confused about what had happened. Had the second half of the book been like the first, this would likely have been top-notch YA lit.
***
And here's the full review:
The initial setup of this novel was great, and I really wish the author had run with this as the entire plot of the novel. So many weird, creepy, and unexplainable things happen to Mara, and part of the intrigue for me was trying to figure out if she was crazy or if there was something supernatural going on. After a while, I kind of hoped what was happening could all be chalked up to PTSD, because this would have been an interesting premise for a novel. In the end, I'd have been okay with the supernatural turn had it made any sense or had any sort of logic to it.
As for character, this is an aspect that is sort of hit or miss. Mara was a pretty good character and, by the end, I felt I knew her pretty well. I think the fact that her family figured prominently in the story was an asset. Her feelings about her family members and the way they treated her helped to flesh her out more fully as a character, which can be a difficult thing to do when the book is told from a limited perspective. Her interest in art was a well-done aspect of her personality, though I did think that Hodkin should have used Mara's artistic talents as a vehicle to explore Mara's feelings about what had happened to her. Rather than Mara spending the bulk of her time sketching Noah, I think it would have been particularly effective for her to draw what had happened to her. I think this was a missed opportunity because, as much as I liked the periods of Mara's blackouts as a device, I think there would have been a big chill factor in Mara blacking out and waking up to find that she had sketched a really elaborate picture that gave some insight into her past.
For the most part, Mara's family is fairly nicely done, though her brother Daniel is far more developed than anyone else. Her father is nearly a non-entity, but this didn't bother me all that much as he was so often away working on his case--though, really, this case proves to be little more than a plot device. I couldn't shake the feeling that there was more to Mara's mother than Hodkin really detailed. Was Mara's mother always so overbearing and did they always have such a tense relationship, or was this something that came about as a result of the accident? Joseph is an interesting character, but a bit underutilized. Again, he felt more like a plot device than an actual character. The strongest character was Daniel, who was an interesting character in his own right. I really liked the dynamic between him and Mara, and thought this was a nice, realistic portrait of a brother/sister relationship.
As for Noah, I didn't find him all that interesting. I thought he was more or less the stereotypical sexy guy with a bad reputation. Granted, as a personal preference, I don't really care for this kind of character. Still, there were things about Noah that seemed false and, sometimes, downright contradictory. It was as if Hodkin was trying to make him this incredibly kind and soft-hearted sort of guy, but that just didn't feel genuine to me. There is one thing in particular that he does that, when Mara finds out, just feels like it falls flat. Shouldn't this knowledge color her perception of him? I get that she's crazily attracted to him but, still, I felt like his flaws were there more for color than to have an actual impact on the story, which to me was a pretty big weakness in the narrative.
The character I liked most, really, was Jamie. I was really interested in him and really liked what bits of him we see in the story, but Hodkin never really let him become a full-fledged character. He was more or less there just to show Mara that Noah was a bad boy, so that Mara could just reject this classification and ignore Jamie's advice. And, really, what does Jamie get out of this relationship? He looks out for Mara, helps her with her homework, and she, in turn, does nothing for him. I was very dissatisfied with what happens with Jamie. It felt too much to me like he was paraded in to move part of the narrative along and then unceremoniously dropped. He definitely got short shrift.
As for the teachers and other students at Croyden (not that you'd really know there are any--they hardly register on Mara's radar), they're all pretty cardboard and/or stereotypical. I don't like it when an author places a character in a novel simply so that the reader will hate him/her, as was the case with Anna. I'm fine with Anna being a nasty, horrible person, but there need to be some facets to her personality. Either she needs to have a moment of redemption, or there needs to be a better justification for her maliciousness.
Where the novel started to go wrong was in the dropping of the creepy narrative and the delving into the realm of romance. There's nothing wrong with a blend of the two, but it felt like the whole point of the book was the romance, which made the supernatural aspects so much less effective. I also found it jarring that the whole first section of the book was about Mara's strange experiences, but then this is suddenly dropped in favor of long descriptions of her and Noah panting over one another. I liked the sexy chaste nature of their relationship, as I feel that this is a much more difficult romance to write. The problem is that Noah isn't all that appealing to me, and the romance would have been a lot more interesting if it had been better integrated into what initially seemed to be the point of the book--Mara's inexplicable powers.
As for the powers, I found them to be a plot device behind which I couldn't entirely get. There doesn't seem to be any rule to them. They seem very nebulous, and I'd have preferred to see something that was governed by some set of rules. Yet the powers vary according to the situation which renders them little more than expedient ways of advancing the plot. The concept of them was really interesting, but the execution was rather poor.
I was frankly astonished that this book turned out to be just the first in what I presume will be a trilogy, as there's absolutely no reason for it. This book could and should have been a one-off novel. As a result, the ending feels rushed and the cliffhanger at the end is not much thicker than a hair. My whole reason for giving this novel three stars is this: it started off strong and then collapsed, which made it only a half-good book. Had it finished as strongly as it had started, this would have been a very good novel indeed.
***
And here's the full review:
The initial setup of this novel was great, and I really wish the author had run with this as the entire plot of the novel. So many weird, creepy, and unexplainable things happen to Mara, and part of the intrigue for me was trying to figure out if she was crazy or if there was something supernatural going on. After a while, I kind of hoped what was happening could all be chalked up to PTSD, because this would have been an interesting premise for a novel. In the end, I'd have been okay with the supernatural turn had it made any sense or had any sort of logic to it.
As for character, this is an aspect that is sort of hit or miss. Mara was a pretty good character and, by the end, I felt I knew her pretty well. I think the fact that her family figured prominently in the story was an asset. Her feelings about her family members and the way they treated her helped to flesh her out more fully as a character, which can be a difficult thing to do when the book is told from a limited perspective. Her interest in art was a well-done aspect of her personality, though I did think that Hodkin should have used Mara's artistic talents as a vehicle to explore Mara's feelings about what had happened to her. Rather than Mara spending the bulk of her time sketching Noah, I think it would have been particularly effective for her to draw what had happened to her. I think this was a missed opportunity because, as much as I liked the periods of Mara's blackouts as a device, I think there would have been a big chill factor in Mara blacking out and waking up to find that she had sketched a really elaborate picture that gave some insight into her past.
For the most part, Mara's family is fairly nicely done, though her brother Daniel is far more developed than anyone else. Her father is nearly a non-entity, but this didn't bother me all that much as he was so often away working on his case--though, really, this case proves to be little more than a plot device. I couldn't shake the feeling that there was more to Mara's mother than Hodkin really detailed. Was Mara's mother always so overbearing and did they always have such a tense relationship, or was this something that came about as a result of the accident? Joseph is an interesting character, but a bit underutilized. Again, he felt more like a plot device than an actual character. The strongest character was Daniel, who was an interesting character in his own right. I really liked the dynamic between him and Mara, and thought this was a nice, realistic portrait of a brother/sister relationship.
As for Noah, I didn't find him all that interesting. I thought he was more or less the stereotypical sexy guy with a bad reputation. Granted, as a personal preference, I don't really care for this kind of character. Still, there were things about Noah that seemed false and, sometimes, downright contradictory. It was as if Hodkin was trying to make him this incredibly kind and soft-hearted sort of guy, but that just didn't feel genuine to me. There is one thing in particular that he does that, when Mara finds out, just feels like it falls flat. Shouldn't this knowledge color her perception of him? I get that she's crazily attracted to him but, still, I felt like his flaws were there more for color than to have an actual impact on the story, which to me was a pretty big weakness in the narrative.
The character I liked most, really, was Jamie. I was really interested in him and really liked what bits of him we see in the story, but Hodkin never really let him become a full-fledged character. He was more or less there just to show Mara that Noah was a bad boy, so that Mara could just reject this classification and ignore Jamie's advice. And, really, what does Jamie get out of this relationship? He looks out for Mara, helps her with her homework, and she, in turn, does nothing for him. I was very dissatisfied with what happens with Jamie. It felt too much to me like he was paraded in to move part of the narrative along and then unceremoniously dropped. He definitely got short shrift.
As for the teachers and other students at Croyden (not that you'd really know there are any--they hardly register on Mara's radar), they're all pretty cardboard and/or stereotypical. I don't like it when an author places a character in a novel simply so that the reader will hate him/her, as was the case with Anna. I'm fine with Anna being a nasty, horrible person, but there need to be some facets to her personality. Either she needs to have a moment of redemption, or there needs to be a better justification for her maliciousness.
Where the novel started to go wrong was in the dropping of the creepy narrative and the delving into the realm of romance. There's nothing wrong with a blend of the two, but it felt like the whole point of the book was the romance, which made the supernatural aspects so much less effective. I also found it jarring that the whole first section of the book was about Mara's strange experiences, but then this is suddenly dropped in favor of long descriptions of her and Noah panting over one another. I liked the sexy chaste nature of their relationship, as I feel that this is a much more difficult romance to write. The problem is that Noah isn't all that appealing to me, and the romance would have been a lot more interesting if it had been better integrated into what initially seemed to be the point of the book--Mara's inexplicable powers.
As for the powers, I found them to be a plot device behind which I couldn't entirely get. There doesn't seem to be any rule to them. They seem very nebulous, and I'd have preferred to see something that was governed by some set of rules. Yet the powers vary according to the situation which renders them little more than expedient ways of advancing the plot. The concept of them was really interesting, but the execution was rather poor.
I was frankly astonished that this book turned out to be just the first in what I presume will be a trilogy, as there's absolutely no reason for it. This book could and should have been a one-off novel. As a result, the ending feels rushed and the cliffhanger at the end is not much thicker than a hair. My whole reason for giving this novel three stars is this: it started off strong and then collapsed, which made it only a half-good book. Had it finished as strongly as it had started, this would have been a very good novel indeed.