Mara Mondays: Reasons I Love Mara Dyer

I've made it no secret on this blog that I adored The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer the way some people adore  chocolate cake (me being one of them, naturally). I fell in love with the these characters that came alive on the page and Noah Shaw shot up to the tippy top of my list of guys I love. Seriously, I go all drooly for him. It's kind of sickening.

Not only that but I adore Michelle Hodkin who created these wonderful characters for me to fall in love with and who told a crowd recently that she is basically Jamie (who when asked if he knew any other language besides Parsel Tongue responded "is there any other (language)?"). As if there weren't enough reason to like her already!

But I'm not here to talk about the boys in this amazing novel or even about the wonderfully sweet woman who created them. Today, I'm going to list why I love the main attraction, the reason for Noah Shaw's entrance, the only one who'd befriend Jamie and the girl who made me question my own sanity. So Mara Dyer, here's my ode to you.

1) Girl is hilarious- Seriously, spend ten minutes in her sarcastic head and tell me you aren't cracking up. All of her reactions where how I'd react to things or how I wished I'd react to things. Her snide little comments after something hard comes around were perfect.

2) She's strong- Which is different than powerful. She may like Noah Shaw but she can go up against him and she isn't about to go all crazy for him and forget her morals. She denies she wants him even when he starts to show interest in her because she respects herself.

3) She's powerful- Which is different than her super human will power. She's got this intense, well, this intense SOMETHING that gives her power and she wants to learn how to control it so she can make it go away.

4) She makes you think- A lot of the time I really was wondering if she's actually crazy or if these things were happening to her. There are precious few books where I question my own sanity but this was one of them. And she has loads of rational explanations for the things she sees that I believed myself.

5) She fails- Forget being perfect. Mara doesn't even come close on this scale. She falters, she suffers for it but at the end of the day, she keeps on trying.

6) She loves her family- Yes, her mother gets on her nerves and she doesn't want to hold hands with her little brother and skip through the park but she would do anything for her family when it comes down to it. She respects her older brother to help her when she needs him and uses her little brother as a motivator to get better.

7) She could be your friend- She talks like a normal girl, she's pretty nice to everyone and she's fiercely loyal. She feels absolutely real, a paper girl jumping out of the book with print turned to thoughts.

There are plenty of reasons to be Team Mara Dyer, though as most of us know now, that is not her real name. I loved getting to know this character and am definitely rooting for her. I hope you will too! I want to know more Mara love! If you wrote up a post, link it up over at Casey from The Bookish Type's post so I can read about it! And in the YA Heroine Tourney, don't forget to vote for Mara Dyer!