Author: Michelle Hodkin
Year of publication: 2011
Summary: Mara Dyer believes life can't 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 strangely unharmed.
There is.
She doesn't believe that after everything she's been through, she can fall in love.
She's wrong.
Review: Mara Dyer was one of those books that I really wanted to like. I did. It had everything that my book snob heart so very much desires - mysteries, murder, paranormal activity. It was, for the most part, well written, however the parts that were not were enough to make me dislike the whole story.
For example... Anna and Aiden. Why? What made the duo such heartless cretins? No one is that malicious over a dumb boy. I expected a proper answer by the end of the story, but nope. They were there only to play the part of the cliche bullies.
Also, Jamie. She knows this guy for all of one minute, he barely gets any screen time and suddenly when he's expelled he's her best friend, cue sobbing. If that was not bad enough, to top it all off once Mara has her little hissy fit she forgets all about him and isn't mentioned again! Some best friend, hey?
I can forgive Mara for her stupidity in this novel. Okay, she's just been through a very traumatic event, she's not thinking straight. I get it, I understand -it's realistic. PTSD is terrifying. It was disappointing that she was, quoth herself, a "Whitey McWhiterson" when her brothers all shared their mothers skin tone. Alright, genetics and whatnot yada yada. But it would have been nice to have a PoC heroine. I don't see why she, like all the other YA heroines with few exceptions had to be as pale as Snow White's ass or whatever.
Noah annoyed me to no end. His behavior throughout the story was creepy and possessive and I just wanted him to go away. His one redeeming feature was that he helped Mara save Mabel. I am sucker for doggy sob stories. Stop stupid YA love interests 2k15 please.
Aside from the characters, I felt some things should have taken more of a major role over the story - such as the Jordana Palmer case. It really didn't get any attention til the very end of the book, when I think maybe it should have. Plus the Anna/Aiden vs Mara fiasco. Seriously, how am I supposed to believe that it was hate at first sight? Just dumb. At least give it more of an arc in the story. I don't need them to forgive each other at the end and become all buddy buddy besties or whatever. I just need it to be believable that Anna hates Mara so intensely that she would cause all of this drama, enough to get someone expelled.
Overall, it was not terrible. But it just wasn't good. The ending was not enough of a cliffhanger to give me reason to want to read the second book after the first one was lackluster at best. Very disappointing, in my opinion. I expected better.
Rating: 3/5 stars
★★★✰✰
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