Made You Up

Made You Up

Reality, it turns out, is often not what you perceive it to be—sometimes, there really is someone out to get you. For fans of Silver Linings Playbook and Liar , this thought-provoking debut tells the story of Alex, a high school senior—and the ultimate unreliable narrator—unable to tell the difference between real life and delusion. Alex fights a daily battle to figure out what is real and what is not. 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 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. Can she trust herself? Can we trust her? Gr 9 Up—Alex is starting her senior year at a new high school, making a clean start after an incident at her previous school. She just wants to keep her grades up and perform her mandatory community service so she can get into college. But Alex knows she'll have a hard time achieving these goals, since she has paranoid schizophrenia. She keeps her illness to herself, hoping that between her doctor, her medication, and her own homegrown coping strategies, no one else need ever know. But on her first day at her new school, she meets a boy who looks exactly like someone she hallucinated on the day her illness first manifested 10 years earlier. And although Miles is not entirely friendly, he may be the only person who understands her. This is a wonderfully complicated book. Adolescence can be absurd, breathless, and frantic on its own. Combine it with mental illness, and things get out of control very quickly. Zappia sets a fast pace that she maintains throughout. Readers will be kept on their toes with quick-witted dialogue, pop culture references, and some odd but accurate word choices, as well as plot twists and big reveals (which may inspire some to reread and see where hints were dropped). While Alex may be unreliable, she is sympathetic from the start. Miles, however, is somehow more complicated than Alex and will almost certainly make readers question their responses to him. VERDICT Zappia tackles some big issues in her debut, creating a messy, hopeful, even joyful book.—Geri Diorio, Ridgefield Library, CT “Debut novelist Zappia presents readers with a wholly unreliable narrator, [but] the characters all seem authentic, thanks to Zappia’s careful attention to detail.” - Booklist “Alex’s sardonic voice and the rapid, Heathers-like dialogue will hold readers’ interest.” - Publishers Weekly “The storytelling texture here recalls Andrew Smith and Sean Beaudoin…There are moments of genuine tragedy redeemed by the acceptance Miles and Alex find in each other amidst all of their imperfections; if love doesn’t conquer all, it certainly makes the battles easier to bear. Readers…will enjoy this quirky trip.” - Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books “Alex is a funny, touching, determined, and smart character, and her story is complex and interesting. Fans of E. Lockhart’s We Were Liars and Matthew Quick’s Silver Linings Playbook will immerse themselves in this nuanced look at trying to live a “normal” life while coping with mental illness.” - Voice of Youth Advocates (VOYA) "Let's play twenty questions." "Okay. But I ask the questions this time." "Fine." "If I guess it before five, I'll be really disappointed." The corners of his lips twisted up in a smile and he said, "Don't insult me." "Are you alive?" "Yes." "Do you live here?" "Yes." "Do I know you?" "Yes." "Did I make you up?" Francesca Zappia  is the award-winning author of  Eliza and Her Monsters, Made You Up, Now Entering Addamsville, Katzenjammer,  and  Greymist Fair,  as well as  The Children of Hypnos , a biweekly serial novel posted on Tumblr and Wattpad. She holds a Computer Science/Math degree and an MBA from the University of Indianapolis. When she’s not writing, Francesca Zappia is baking, playing video games, and watching terrible movies. She lives in central Indiana.