#1 in the Mara Dyer series
Published September 27, 2011 by Simon and Schuster Children's Publishing
3 stars
DAC 2011
Goodreads Review
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: This book was a major disappointment for me, and this review may get a bit ranty but I'll try and reign it in. Now, I'm not saying that it was bad or poorly written. But I was expecting an exciting and fresh murder mystery/ghost story, and what I got was an overdone and tired paranormal romance. It's not a poorly written paranormal romance, but it was unoriginal. People who liked Hush, Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick will really enjoy this. I think if I had read this book in January or February, which is when I first started reading YA, I would have absolutely loved this book. However I feel like I've read way too many YA books that go down the same road TUoMD did.
This book divides into two parts for me. The first part is a ghosty murder mystery where we don't know what is going on with Mara and it full of WTF moments (it's the part I really loved) and the second part falls into the stereotypical paranormal romance. That's when TUoMD lost a lot of appeal for me. It became predictable and I started to care less and less about the characters because the focus shifted from an awesome mystery to a boring romance.
I'll start with the things I liked. I loved the mystery around why Mara was in the hospital, what happened to her friends, and what the hell is currently going on. I loved all of the scary stuff that happened and I wanted so much more of that. When this book is good, it's damn good. Which is why it was so frustrating too. I don't understand why this book couldn't have been a paranormal mystery or even horror book. It had SO much potential and great marketing. I also LOVE the cover, it's so cool and mysterious.
I had problems with the ending, mostly because I had a very hard time understanding what was going on. I have pretty good reading comprehension skills and I found myself re-reading paragraphs because I was trying to understand what was happening. Now, part of this was probably because I finished the book at around 3am, but it also was the unclear writing. I think this was partially due to the fact that the story hadn't focused on the mystery for so long that at the end when it tried to go back to that it was underdeveloped.
The other parts that I had an issue with was how the relationship was handled and how the friendships developed (or didn't). Mara made a friend at school but he really seemed like a device to introduce Noah, the love interest, and once that relationship had started he was unceremoniously dumped from the story. This pissed me off. I hate it when romance=no other character is important in the MC's life. I kept expecting the friend to make another appearance, but he never did. He was just gone. The romantic relationship between Mara and Noah was very Twilight-y. Noah was too perfect (hot, smart, rich as balls) and Mara was too insecure about him and her feelings. And then the paranormal aspect of Noah was also too convenient. It literally was like "oh, you have magic powers? I have magic powers! What a coincidence!" Their whole relationship and the plot devices used to move their relationship were frustrating, illogical, and too perfect to be realistic.
The final issue I had is a minor one that I didn't like but many people may, and that's the writing style used to create humor in conversations. I know the author was trying to be amusing and teenager-y but it came across as too crude for my taste (and that's saying something because I'm a pretty crude person). There were just too many immature boner jokes and sexual innuendos that didn't really fit with the voices of the characters nor the overall tone of the book.
Now, don't let this review get you down. I still really enjoyed this book, even with all of the complaints I have. I think I feel this way because I was hoping for something amazing, and what I got was a story I'd already read in 20 other books. Many people will love TUoMD, I just wasn't one of them.
