Review: The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin (TBR Challenge #10)

Yes, I'm late to this fandom, but now that I've read this book, I can totally see why everyone loves it.  I got this book a while back from a giveaway, but now I'll have to buy or check out the rest so I can see what happens next.

The main character is Mara Dyer of course.  She recently lost her best friend and her boyfriend in a terrible accident that she almost didn't make out of either.  She feels guilty for surviving, and has hallucinations of her dead friends.  It gets so bad that her mother starts talking about putting her in a mental institution. She is able to convince her family to move instead, saying that the house will only make her remember her best friend and make it harder to move on.  In the new town Mara and her two brothers, one older named Daniel, and a younger one named Joseph, got to a private school.  And on her first day at the school she meets a mysterious and frustrating boy named Noah.  She also meets the "queen" of the school and her best friend, and has a not so great run in with them.  And she meets a boy named Jamie, who will become a good friend.  But she doesn't seem to be done with the hallucinations, including one on the first day where she walks into a class and all of a sudden sees what she remembers of the building she'd been in with her friends as it is falling down around her.  Soon her problems seem to be more than just hallucinations.  She sees a dog that looks abused and neglected near the school one day, and when she's trying to be nice to the dog, its owner comes out and yells at her, and then she sees him do something terrible to the dog.  As she walks back to school she has thoughts about how the dog's owner should die horribly for what he's doing to the dog.  She goes by later and finds out that the man is dead.  And pretty similar to how she'd pictured it.

Other things happen, alligators disappear/die when she has thoughts about them, other people die as well.  She also starts remembering bits and pieces of the night she lost her best friend Rachel and boyfriend Jude.  Turns out that maybe Jude wasn't quite the boyfriend you'd think.  And maybe she might have thought or wished something would happen to him right before the building crashed down on them.  And then there's Noah.  His interest in her is part of what sparked the conflict between Mara and the popular girl Anna.  And while he seems to be very interested in her, he's got quite the reputation for loving and leaving all the girls.  But he seems to be really interested, even as he makes her annoyed.  There's something about him that she can't quite put her finger on though.  She learns more about him because he lets her in, something he hasn't done with anyone else it seems.  But every once in a while he'll leave her for a minute or two, with no explanation.  Or he doesn't show up to school with no explanation.  All of this is going on, and Mara is trying to figure out if she's crazy, or if she's still just trying to heal from the big tragedy.

I loved the relationship between Mara and Noah.  I always feel like any real relationship I might have would be full of sarcasm and annoying things.  The story was great, while I kind of had an inkling of what might be happening in different parts of the story, I was always pleasantly surprised to find I hadn't quite guessed it, and what happened was a really neat way to meet that detail of the story.  While for the most part the story kind of wrapped up at the end, there was a bit of a big cliffhanger or WHAT?! moment at the end.  Definitely leading in to make me so eager to read the next book and see just what is going on.  Great, great story.

Review: Insanity by Susan Vaught

First, thanks to Netgalley and Bloomsbury USA Children's Books for allowing me to read an e-galley of this.  As you have to notice from just one look, the cover is what first drew me in to see what the book was about. When I read the synopsis, it sounded even better. While I've given it a rating of 3 stars on Goodreads, I actually would do more of a 3.5.  I almost gave it a 4, but had some issues that I just had to back myself down a bit.  But even with the issues I had, it is still a very scary book, and one I will definitely look into purchasing for the high school library where I work.  I will also highly recommend it to people who enjoy a good ghost story. 

As I read one person's short review of the book on Goodreads, they mentioned about how it had multiple person point of view for the story.  And it does.  This reader had to set it aside on the 3rd person that it went to.  I can see how that could be a problem, although honestly, the characters did pretty much sound different as we read from their point of view.  And actually, we get the story from 4 different characters' points of view, going back to one of the first ones at the very end actually.

It starts with Levi.  Levi is out walking on a kind of scary night, and the bells of the local psychiatric hospital begin ringing.  According to his grandmother, you should never be outside on a night when the bells ring, because that means death is nearby.  And it is true, as Levi even runs into the killer that night after meeting a stray dog that he sees out following him.

The second point of view is Forest, a girl who has just reached the age where she is no longer being a foster child. She has just started a job at the Lincoln Psychiatric Hospital that we learned about in the Levi's part.  While she is there, she does get a bit spooked as she sees some pretty scary things.  In fact at one point, she learns she can help people passing on to the other side, quite helpful in the elderly portion of the hospital.  And when she goes to help a spirit, she ends up going to the other side herself.  And when she comes back, she finds that a lot of time has passed. So much that the woman who had really helped her at the hospital when she first started is now an elderly woman living in the hospital.  And so Forest is able to help her over.  She has met Levi now, and they are an interesting couple.  You see his grandmother that he mentioned in his part is a woman named Imogene who has been at the hospital for a long time, helping out with spirits, both good ones crossing over, and trying to keep the bad ones from coming out. 

The third point of view is a boy named Darius.  Darius has just lost his 2nd grandmother, both of them had died at the hospital.  And as this last one passes away, she tells him something that will lead to some scary things happening as he starts his job at Lincoln.  She tells him that she tried to stop him, but he is still hungry and Darius will need to finish it.  Darius soon learns that his grandfather was a serial killer, killing little kids.  And his grandmother had killed him, or so she thought.  It seems his grandfather has somehow broken through and with the help of an evil spirit is trying to begin his work again.  Darius meets Forest and Levi, and they help him to try to finish his grandfather off for good.  Now here is what helped me keep going with all of the different points of view, all of these people were really connected more than any obvious way of being around or working at the hospital. One of Darius' grandmothers was Forest's friend that she'd helped pass on to the other side.  So now we see the connection.  We also meet Trina, Darius' girlfriend during his portion of the story.

The fourth point of view is Trina.  Yeah, obvious connection as the girlfriend, who also gets sucked in when Darius is trying to send his grandfather back to hell or wherever.  But, there is another connection even farther back, to the other two in the story, or at least back to Levi.  There is a connection between Trina's father, who is a pastor, and Levi.  A connection I'll let you read the book and find out for yourself.  And once again there is something going on in the hospital. Something even more ancient than what has been going on in the past parts of the story.

This book has so much action, so many good ghosts and back stories.  I loved how all the people ended up being connected in some way to each other, and even to the town and hospital itself.  Very creative and I'm sure took lots of figuring and planning on the author's part.  Now the issues I had, while there were so many back stories that ended up being connected in really great ways, there was something about having Madoc blood.  And I don't know if I missed that part in my reading, or just don't remember it, but while I knew it was something important, it was stressed throughout the story, I'm not sure exactly what it means.  Okay maybe that's my only issue, and actually, it could be my own fault that maybe I skipped over that part or just don't remember it, so I may have to go back to Goodreads and go ahead and bump my review up to 4 stars.  Don't you love how I talked myself into that through writing the review?

Again, great story, the cover is perfect and totally sets the mood of the book.  Yes, it is a scary haunted metal hospital, but it is more than that.  A unique storyline about witches and people who just have some sort of abilities to help the dead cross over, or try to stop the dead that have bad intentions when possible. I could totally see this as a tv series actually.  Someone call the SyFy channel and let them know!