1st Quarter Book Review- "The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer"

         This quarter I had the pleasure of reading The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin with a lengthy total of 456 pages. Throughout the novel, the main character, Mara, tries to find out if all the tragedies that had happened to her since the incident that killed her best friend Rachel, her boyfriend Jude, and his sister Claire, but left her alive were all connected somehow. She tries to identify the reason why she is being haunted by her past and wonders if she was perhaps responsible for her friends' deaths and everything after it. Following the incident, Mara and her family move to a new city, in Florida, where she starts to attend a prestigious private school  and try and start over but no matter where she goes, she can't seem to stop hallucinating Jude, or so she thought  and having blackouts that often leave her with the sense of lost time. Mara soon falls for Noah, a mysteriously handsome guy who does not quite fit in with the rest of the posh school she now attends. As the story goes by, secrets get revealed that only bring them closer together and uncover the truth of what really happened that night and also, how Noah is somehow connected to her and to it all!
In my personal opinion, I loved the way Hodkin displayed the main character, Mara, all the details on her personality and the way she emphasized her character change as the novel comes to an end and how she found a way to describe Mara as a unique yet super relatable teenage girl. Overall, I would say that this novel provided a poetic tone to it because of how Hodkin emphasized every detail of the characters' personalities and physical traits even. Along with that, Hodkin made sure that her words sucked the reader into the story with all the mixed genres: suspense, fantasy, romance, paranormal and all the good stuff that makes up a great book. As I mentioned before, Mara's character defiantly changes by the end of the novel because she becomes stronger in order to face the truth of the darkness following her. Noah is also a dynamic character because it shows how he goes from being cold and laid back teenage boy to a strong persistent man that wants to help Mara with whatever he is able to, along with the fact that there is much more information given about the character and his background as the story progresses. Other than the two, the rest of the characters are pretty flat, there is no doubt that they are very important to the plot of the story but their characters don't change at all, at least not in this book (it is the first of a trilogy).  
I would not change a thing from this novel, every detail and every moment adds up to make a great piece of literature that many will enjoy reading. From beginning to end, this novel keeps you at the edge of your seat, eager to see what's on the next page. I would not do anything but highly recommend it to anyone who appreciates a great book!

P.S. This book would totally make a great movie as well!