The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer

The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin, 452 pages

To say this is a twisted high school love story would be an understandment. The young adult novel "The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer" starts out with teenage girls being typical teenage girls and playing with a Ouija board. Of course, a disturbing message appears in response to one of the questions the girls ask the board, but they assume it was because someone was moving the planchette (yes, I did have to look up that word) to make it say what they wanted. The protagonist, Mara Dyer, is immediately spooked by what the Ouija board was telling her and her two friends (Rachel and Claire) and wants to end the game immediately. At the beginning of the next chapter, a terrible "accident" has happened an Mara is awoken in the hospital having no recollection of the incident and finds out that three of her friends (including Rachel and Claire) have died as a result.

After the accident, Mara suffers from PSTD and has horrible nightmares where the troubling reality of the accident slowly comes back to her. Her family moves to a new town so that Mara can have a fresh start, but she keeps having nightmares and additionally suffers from hallucinations. She meets a boy at her school, Noah, a bad boy with a bad reputation for using girls.  Mara, of course, falls for him.

The rest of the book was sometimes confusing, but wrapped up well towards the end. In the last chapter, something shocking occurs, and then the author ends it saying "end of volume 1". I looked it up online and saw that there are three books in this series, I had no idea! Overall, I enjoyed the book and am definitely excited to read the next two stories.