Mara Dyer wakes up with no memory of the building collapse that kills her best friend and boyfriend. She wakes up with no memory of why they went to the abandoned asylum or what happened to cause the accident. But she does wake up different. She begins seeing things—and people—that aren’t there. She loses chunks of time. She hurts herself without meaning to. All this leads to her family moving to Florida for a fresh start and a chance of normalcy for Mara. But in Florida, things only get worse. There’s a brutal murder case. A vicious high school clique targets Mara. And Noah Shaw—the troublemaker with a killer accent and hair sent from heaven.
I’ll confess that I was impatient through the first half of the book. Save for Mara and her slowly unfolding mystery, the soporific prose and stale characters (i.e. the high school queen bee, the bad boy with a secret heart of gold who likes the main character) made it hard to pick up the book again after I set it down. Somewhere around page 200, however, Hodkin hits her stride and the story takes off. The romance becomes more believable and genuine, and the mystery storyline subsumes some of the dead space lingering in the early pages. I devoured the last 200 pages in less than a day, and was even halfway surprised by the twist at the end. Despite its flaws, Mara Dyer does have an original premise, and would be a good choice for a reader of young adult books looking for a different take on the paranormal or the mystery genre.