Review: The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer

Title The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer (Mara Dyer 1)
By Michelle Hodkin
Genre YA supernatural/paranormal
Pages 452
Recommended by Everyone

First sentence The ornate script on the board twisted in the candlelight, making the letters and numbers dance in my head.

Synopsis 
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.  (from Goodreads)

What it has going for it
I'm a little scared to write this review, guys. This book was on nearly everyone's top ten favorite books of 2012 and seeing that encouraged me to finally pull it off my shelf and start reading. Unfortunately, and as usual, I didn't find it all that amazing. But don't worry, I didn't hate the book. There were good things about it. First of all, despite how predictable it was, I really enjoyed watching the story unfold and thoroughly enjoyed watching Mara discover her secret. Sheesh, besides that I can't think of anything else  that wowed me.

What's lacking
Well, as I mentioned, it was incredibly predictable. Yeah, there were a few things that while I suspected something I wasn't positive what they were, but I like being blindsided and I never was. My biggest complaint, though, was the romance. I know, I know, it's a supernatural/paranormal romance, but it completely took over the whole story! It's like we got thrown into this mystery, it grabbed us, gets us interested and then, after we're tied down, we get hundreds of pages of "romance". And I call it "romance" because...I didn't like Noah. I know, you're not surprised, neither am I, but still.  And it also irritated me that Mara really never seemed upset that her friends were dead. They just up and move and she's already joking around with her brother and Noah. It just didn't feel believable. You don't get over losing your best friend and having no memory AND hallucinating that quickly. Oh, and the "twist" ending...I'll admit I didn't suspect it but rather than gasping or being shocked I specifically remember rolling my eyes. 

Favorite moment
 Meh, nothing blew me away. I liked the scene in the swamp and the whole alligator thing. That was creepy.

Yea or Nay?
Sure, but you're not going to find anything new or surprising here.