Book Review: Made You Up by Francesca Zappia

Reality, it turns out, is often not what you perceive it to be—sometimes, there really is someone out to get you. Made You Up tells the story of Alex, a high school senior unable to tell the difference between real life and delusion. This is a compelling and provoking literary debut that will appeal to fans of Wes Anderson, Silver Linings Playbook, and Liar.
Alex fights a daily battle to figure out the difference between reality and delusion. Armed with a take-no-prisoners attitude, her camera, a Magic 8-Ball, and her only ally (her little sister), Alex wages a war against her schizophrenia, determined to stay sane long enough to get into college. She’s pretty optimistic about her chances until classes begin, and she runs into Miles. Didn't she imagine him? Before she knows it, Alex is making friends, going to parties, falling in love, and experiencing all the usual rites of passage for teenagers. But Alex is used to being crazy. She’s not prepared for normal. 
Funny, provoking, and ultimately moving, this debut novel featuring the quintessential unreliable narrator will have readers turning the pages and trying to figure out what is real and what is made up.

Fair warning to all who are thinking about this: the story is about a girl who has schizophrenia. While it is not a story about the mental illness, it is still an important part of the story. 

If you are one who is well-versed in the genre that is Young Adult, then you are probably aware of the fact that there are a lot of book dedicated to all types of mental illness. Some are good and handle the illness as it should; with understanding and respect of it without making it to be any more or less than what it is. Others have been known to romanticize these illnesses and use them as an easy way to get popularity by tackling "hard issues". 

I praise all the higher beings out there that this one was not like the latter group at all. 

By the time the 10th page rolled around, I was in love with this book. I was laughing out loud because of how witty and genuinely funny the jokes were. The jokes were about how the protagonist, who is schizophrenic, sees things that aren't always there. It wasn't the demeaning bullying kind of joke where it made fun of it, it was just accepting of that fact and making observations in her situation. She does this throughout the book. 

Since she is the narrator of the story, she's obviously unreliable. She has auditory and visual hallucinations. I knew really soon into the novel that not everything I was seeing through her eyes were real. Which was exciting and also really interesting to know it but get so absorbed that you quickly forget. There are some obvious ones to the reader and maybe some not so obvious. 

It was just really great as a reader, to read from the perspective of a mental ill person without constantly thinking that they have this illness. After a while I just got used to her seeing red squirrels and men in suits on the school's roof. It was a part of her character as much as being good at math or living in San Diego is for other characters.

Then there was the romance. Yes, there is a romance in this book. Thankfully, her love interest does not find her "quirky" or whatever because of her illness. He just loves her for who she is and wants to be with her. He was more than able to handle the stuff in both their lives. He's a good boy.

There's also a mystery aspect. Which sounds weird since we have an unreliable narrator, but we have one anyways. It makes the story even more gripping for me. It was like playing Nancy Drew, only that some of the clues might not be real. I guessed the big plot twist like three pages before she did, so I'm really glad by that. I hate guessing correctly early on. Still confused about the scoreboard. Like, wtf. You'll understand when you read it. 

I can't wait to own this bad boy. The cover is wonderful and the story is even more so. SOON.

Read: July 2015
My Rating: 5 stars / 5 stars