Review: The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin

Release Date: September 27, 2011
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Pages: 456

Format: Print
Where to buy: Amazon

Summary (from Goodreads)

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.

Thoughts

First off...okay..."Haunting and dreamlike"? Are you serious? I would say this book is anything but. This book was not haunting. It didn't scare me at all. It was not dreamlike. I was not mesmerized by it. Honestly, I would put this in my "WTF did I just read" list. Because forreal....WTF did I just read? And not in that good woah-this-book-rocked-my-socks-off kind of way, but that I-have-no-idea-what-just-happened way.

I will admit I was surprised by the ending, but it still left a lot to be desired. There were 59 chapters in the book. I repeat - 59 chapters - and it took about 50 of them to get me to understand what the hell was going on. It just kept going and going and going until finally I understood what the book was even about. I was left feeling kind of blah...like I just wasted the last two months (yes, it took me two months to actually finish this book) reading a bunch of nonsense.

Mara was even more blah than the feeling I had after reading. She was so blah she makes blah look good. I felt no real connection to Mara; it was like reading the same crap over and over. And Noah wasn't much better, but he was just a teensy bit better. I couldn't connect with him either, but at least I felt like I had a better idea of what his character was like. And the cheesy lines at the end of chapters? Seriously? "But it felt, somehow, like I had already lost." and "But there would be no shelter in Noah's bed or in his arms from the howling of my sins." WHAT???! I don't even get it. I. Can't. Even.

Okay, but in all honesty: I might actually read the second book, because the author did a pretty good job of making me want to know what happens next. It could be promising.

Book Review: Happiness...Almost by Buddy Moore

Title & Author: Happiness...Almost by Buddy Moore
Publisher: Dorrance Publishing Co.
Pages: 125
Why I read it: Received in print to review

You know, I'd really prefer not to start off my book blog with a crappy review, but here goes nothin'. I received this book from Dorrance Publishing Co. for free, in exchange for a review on it. Let me just say: this book sucked so much that after about 20 pages, I really didn't want to read anymore. Sadly, I'm not one to just not finish a book, so I had to read it all.

The book seemed so promising. The title sounded decent, the synopsis seemed like it would make for a great story. It was not anything I had expected.

[SPOILER ALERT] (As if you were even considering reading it...)

The story begins with an 18-year-old boy named David who is anti-social and doesn't really fit in. He is convinced that in order to find true happiness, he must have a girlfriend. He goes to a church outing (after his mother suggests he go and he "doesn't want to put up her shit") and meets this girl named Brittany on the bus ride. Turns out David's mom asked the pastor to have this chick pay him some "special attention". Who does that?

I mean really, David's dad was practically the only character who remotely had any sense. He thinks it's a bad idea and says it will only hurt David more in the long run if Brittany turns him down or if she just wants to be friends. Well, guess what? She doesn't want to have anything to do with him; frankly he freaks her out a bit because he starts to get super obsessive. He goes on a killing spree and is determined to murder anyone who gets in the way of their "relationship" or who makes her unhappy. And I mean anyone---the mailman, the janitor, even her own father.

And it's not even that these people are making Brittany unhappy, or really interfering with their relationship (or non-relationship in this case). They're just people that she happens to talk to and express her concern for David's behavior. Because he is so obsessed and convinced that him and Brittany are supposed to be together, he doesn't see that she is even freaked out by the situation, and doesn't understand that you probably shouldn't call someone 20x a day if you want them to give you any time of day. He just doesn't get it, which is really the saddest part of the story.

The entire time I'm reading this book, I'm thinking "Seriously? Can it just end now?" We already know what is going to happen in the end, we really don't need it played out for us any further.

This book was just plain difficult to read, and I don't mean in a challenging, intellectual way. I mean it was awful. There was absolutely no character development, and I couldn't really relate to any of the characters throughout the entire book. Even the main character, David---I couldn't relate to and feel bad for him until the last two pages of the book. I know that sounds horrible because he was clearly mentally-ill, but he was flat to me, and didn't have much personality to go along with it. 

Another one of my main issues is that throughout the book, there were entire paragraphs with each sentence start with "He". "He did this," "He did that," for like six sentences long. Seriously? There were no other words that could have started the sentence? There were a ton of over-explanations, with things that I knew were going to happen and it had to be spelled out for me.

I like books that I can get lost in. Books that have a plot. And characters that are actually developed and make a place in my heart. Characters that I can put myself in their shoes. I was definitely disappointed with this story to say the least, and I really hope that the next book from this Publisher will not be so amateur.