Mara Dyer woke up in a hospital three days after a horrible accident that killed three of her friends. She has no memory of the event, and no explanation as to why she survived with barely a scratch on her. If that wasn't weird enough, she keeps hallucinating about her dead friends, and is having trouble telling the real world from the imaginary. Then there's the sexy mysterious bad boy who's pursuing Mara... all kinds of potential for trouble there!
As a teen horror novel, this one definitely had the right elements (see above paragraph) and Hodkin did a good job putting them together, without tipping her hand as to what's really going on here. I'm a bit disappointed that this is yet another YA series (not everything has to be a trilogy, people!). Several elements reminded me of The O.C., a TV show that was set in an upscale neighborhood in a sunny climate (and, yes, one of my guilty pleasures): the teenage cliques, the architecture of the school, the elaborate parties, the homes of the uber-rich, plot twists that make it a bit hard to suspend disbelief, a main character obsessed with Death Cab for Cutie. The one thing The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer had that The O.C. didn't: alligators. And for the purpose of scaring the crap out of me, those do a great job; I'll definitely crack open these books if I want to have the bejesus scared out of me by a reptile. But for sanity's sake, I'm sticking with Peter Gallagher's eyebrows, which are slightly less scary.
P.S. A note on the cover: I kinda liked the cover of this book, which, despite whitewashing a mixed-race main character (boo!) and featuring an image that has NOTHING to do with the plot, seemed almost holographic and mysterious, particularly under the shiny library plastic cover.
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