My Rating: 3.5 hearts
Thoughts on the Novel: Francesca Zappia’s Made You Up is probably
one of the most interestingly written stories I’ve ever read. It begins with
Alex, the protagonist, describing freeing some lobsters from their tank at a store
with the help of a blue-eyed boy she meets … only to find out that this event
is a hallucination. Years after being diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic
though, Alex once again meets this boy. Thus begins the reader’s dilemma: How
much of what Alex narrates can we believe?
I really liked Alex’s voice. Despite constantly trying to discern
what’s real and what’s not, Alex still remained upbeat and did her best to move
forward to live a normal life. She was just fantastically written!
The romance also didn’t seem like your typical romance. Miles was often
unlikeable – it sounds like he’s on the autism spectrum – but he and Alex worked
as friends, and later, as a couple. I liked seeing them struggle to overcome the
symptoms of their individual disorders so that they could care for someone, and
then really appreciated that falling in love didn’t cure them of their problems.
I think my only issue with Made You Up was that it ended up having a
small paranormal element because what I thought was a hallucination turned out
to be something real - or at least, otherworldly. Otherwise, I loved how this book blurred the line between
imagination and reality.
Comments About the Cover: The cover is a little weird, but I also think it’s very unique and eye-catching.
In exchange for an honest review, this book was received from the publisher (HarperCollins) for free via Edelweiss.
