Book Review on Made You Up
Starting from the end of the school year - which was over a month ago – I had a new favorite book. Being an avid reader, I have read many excellent books, and my favorite books would include numerous novels. This book was about a girl with a disease, and her struggle. Sounds typical, right? Some girl with a rare cancer disease… she falls in love with a boy… then she doesn’t want to be close, because she doesn’t want to hurt her lover…skip ahead… oh but wait! Then they find…blah blah blah… close the book. Sounds like what this book is about; same ‘ol boring plot about diseased people, going on, and on, and on. There have been too many of those faux books pretending to be different and unique in their own way, and too many times in which I have shut the book and thrown it across the room. So when I picked this book up with an intriguing cover, I was already dejected by many books, and extremely hopeful that this book was going to be good. When I opened this book, there was a prologue. Now, I really dislike prologues. I always feel like they’re pointless to an extent; they are talking about something that we have no idea about. Most of the times, I just skim briefly through the prologue and dive right in to the book. But the very few words got me captured. It was about a little girl in a supermarket. Not like the action-packed prologues that I despise and skip, but just something as simple as that. This book began extremely well, and the plot and overall writing far excelled what I was searching for, a well written book that was new and different than most realistic books. Based on the five star scale, I would give this book a 6.
So what really caught my eye were the cover and the title. The cover is really eye-catching; it’s blue, with a red-haired girl underneath a black umbrella, and the umbrella had the title in all uppercase orange letters. Not very exciting, right? But the blue looked like watercolor, like someone spilled a bunch of gorgeous blue watercolor onto the book. To those who watched Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, you know how in the Pensieve, when the people in the memory appeared through this foggy thing that’s spilling? It’s like that, but blue. And I, being a huge Harry Potter fan, had to pick the book that resembled so closely to something in the HP movies. The fact that this remarkable author made the cover so fascinating in a unique way made me wonder just what sort of a brilliant story could she have conjured up to match with this amazing cover. I know this is probably a silly ramble on just some book, but until you have seen it in front of your eyes, you won’t understand. This cover just stood out, didn’t say “Pick Me! Pick Me! Don’t I look so different and special?” It’s like the book knew it would be read by anyone who seen the cover. It didn’t need to yell out.
And it was right.
I picked this book up, and turned it around to read the back. This was a hardcover book, so I was expecting some reviews on the book, but instead, there were a few words: “She was used to crazy. She wasn’t prepared for normal.” Several hundred questions began forming. Who was the mysterious she? Why didn’t the author give the name of the girl? And what did it mean by “She wasn’t prepared for normal.”? And the title, Made You Up. Made who up? Does she have an imaginary friend? Everything on the cover and back of this book just held my attention. It wasn’t like that I was interested, and just picked the book up to see what it was about. It was more like something that I had to read, like it wasn’t acceptable if I didn’t. So I began to read, and the more I read, the more the book held my attention. And boy am I glad that I read this book.
This book is about a girl named Alex who has a disease called schizophrenia. It’s a brain disorder in which a person may have difficulty telling the difference between fantasy and reality. Alex sees things that aren’t there, because her mind is making hallucinations. In the prologue, she believed she set bright red lobsters free from the tank with a newfound friend in a supermarket when she was 5, but it turned out to be a hallucination. She didn’t need to ask her mom to know the boy was a hallucination. That was the first time her schizophrenia appeared. Now in high school, Alex is going to a new school after a mishap of her hallucinations. Alex didn’t want anyone to know about her disorder; otherwise, she would be marked as an insane person. The story is about her struggle to keep her disorder in check, to keep it a secret while still being able to tell the difference between imaginary and reality, while going through high school. What threw her off in the first chapter was a boy who looked exactly like her newfound friend during the lobster incident.
But he was a hallucination, right? So how is he real?
That is how her relationship with Miles, the boy, started. Alex wasn’t sure whether or not Miles was the very boy in the supermarket, or just some other person. She couldn’t ask, because if he wasn’t, then her secret would be at risk. Interesting, right? Maybe not, but it is much more interesting to read the book. The plot (no spoilers!) was well written, nothing similar to the typical struggle of a girl with a disorder. Alex is more or less a normal person with the same normal teen feelings, same teen high school parties. Her disease, as the story goes on, becomes one with her life; it wasn’t really something that stuck out, like an extra limb. It fit in. I think that’s what made this book different and something special.
This book is currently next to me, open, while I’m typing this review. I am half reading and half typing. It’s too good of an opportunity to pass. I think this book is one that everyone should read, whether they like realistic fiction or not. This book seemed more realistic to me than any other book. I could imagine everything that’s happening. Not like visualizing the way your 1st grade teacher taught you, but almost as if the book is really happening this moment. As if you are the narrator or a spirit inside Alex’s brain and know everything that’s going on. So to all HP fans out there, take my advice as a fellow HP friend (since we connect in the way only HP fans connect) and put down the book you are reading and start this one. To all those who are not HP fans, first read HARRY POTTER, and then read this book. I can’t degrade HP. Sorry. But HP is a series, and Made You Up is a book, so I can say that this book is the best book ever. In the whole world. You may be thinking “Pffff. This girl’s talking gibberish. I know the best book ever, and it’s not that book.” Whether or not your favorite book is Made You Up, this book is something everyone should read. Like. Everyone.
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