Made You Up by Franzesca Zappia | Book Review

Title: Made You Up

Author: Francesca Zappia

Series: N/A

Pages: 488

Publication date: May 19th, 2015

My ranting: 🌟🌟🌟🌟

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.

“I didn’t have the luxury of taking reality for granted. And I wouldn’t say I hated people who did, because that’s just about everyone. I didn’t hate them. They didn’t live in my world.

But that never stopped me from wishing I lived in theirs.”

This was such a cute and fluffy story with mental health representation and I’m a happy potato now because I’ve read it!

I’ve been wanting to read more mental health books for a while so I thought this was a good place to start and guess what? I was SO right.

First of all LOOK AT THAT COVER. ISN’T IT GORGEOUS??! Because it was a 100% cover buy to me. The watercolor theme and the blue and purple-ish theme looked so pretty I needed it on my shelves.

This book deals with a character with schizophrenia and paranoia. It was a good representation in my opinion, and because it’s told in first person, you get to feel what the protagonist does and her struggle to distinguish what it’s real from what it’s not. And that was honestly one of my favourite parts.

Even though the book has romance in it, I would say the main focus was Alex and how she’s trying to come to terms with her schizophrenia, differencing what it’s real from what she made up. She is kinda quirky but in a good way, and I definitely enjoyed reading from her POV.

“Sometimes I think people take reality for granted.”

I found the characters super adorable and special in their own way. They were your typical young adult characters but they had a funny side and the lines in the conversations were so funny and geeky too I was melting of cuteness (like the 20 questions between Miles and Alex or the lobster obsession Alex had).

I really enjoyed Alex’s development throughout the story and in high school. At the beginning she’s quite insecure and doesn’t really want anyone to know she had a mental disease but throughout the story she made friends, learnt new things about herself and others and decided she maybe needed help.

“In a weird way, it felt like he belonged here. He belonged in the land of phoenixes and witches, the place where things were too fantastic to be real.”

I would say the ending surprised me SO MUCH. I wasn’t expecting that at all and maybe that is one of the reasons why I rated it 4 stars. It had some parts I wasn’t expecting AT ALL, and I’m looking forward to read more of her work (I believe she has another book coming out later this year so yay!).

So if you’re starting contemporary or want to read more mental health books I totally suggest to pick this one up!