Made for You
Melissa Marr
Harper Collin’s Childrens 2015
When Eva is victim of a hit and run
in her sedate North Carolina town, she is confused. Who on earth would hit someone with a car and
not stop? Who would want to hit her?
Eva is, after all, Little Miss Popular with a locally noble lineage and
all the right sort of friends. However,
the matter of who hit her takes a back seat to the fact that she has woken from
her accident with a strange ability. She
can now, through touch, foresee how those around her are going to die. While her new gift seems at first a curse,
she quickly realises that she was only the first victim of a killer who will
stop at nothing to get to her and that her death sight might be the only chance
she has of saving not only herself but also her friends. At her side stands Nate, an old
not-quite-the-right-sort-of-friend, who has drifted back into her life after a
long absence. Together they find
themselves locked in a struggle with an unknown assailant – one that could easily
end in both of their deaths.
Eva is a perfectly nice
character. Born into a life of privilege,
she’s very aware of her status and influence but hasn’t let it go to her
head. However, she does have an air of
superiority about her – particularly in terms of her peers. You get the impression that she finds them
all a bit vacuous. To be fair, they seem
a bit vacuous. From the jealous
ex-boyfriend, to the cadre of giggling girls, they are all vaguely irritating
and at times you wonder why she hangs out with them at all. Yet she seems to genuinely care for them and
they for her, in their own way, and when she starts envisioning their imminent
deaths her panic is palpable.
Luckily, Eva has Nate who is by far
the most multi-faceted character in the whole shebang. There is something terribly attractive about
any character who is told the unbelievable and solidly, loyally believes and
Nate is one of those. Luckily, Marr has
made him smart, caring and slightly mysterious rather than painting him as a
love-sick puppy. He is not, in fact,
unlike Wicked Lovely’s Seth – another
Marr creation of definitive swoon. While Made
for You’s narrative largely stems from Eva, it is interspersed with a first
person narrative from the mystery killer whose rambling reasoning is all unsurprisingly
disjointed and creepy. However, these
sections are one of the novels failings as they somewhat quickly clue readers
in to who the killer is. Perhaps this
was intentional but removing this core mystery just leads to a lack of general
suspense – something that Made for You
was already sadly lacking.
Melissa Marr has proved her writing
chops with the fantastically detailed and compelling Wicked Lovely series.
However, Made for You falls
pretty flat in comparison. It’s
surprisingly short and at times oddly over-sentimental. The core premise is a strong one but not
entirely unique and what it really required was a strong, dark undercurrent or
at least more of an edge than it has.
Yes, the killer is creepy and yes Eva’s ability has interesting
repercussions but it’s hard to care about a cast of characters that, for the
large part, are pretty badly underwritten.
There are some great ideas that don’t really get the page time that
might make them compelling (the idea of the language of flowers is a great one,
but seems to get lost in the mix) and the grand denouement seems predictable by
the time you reach it. The killer, while
creepy in his obsession, comes across almost pantomime-like in his villainy and
Eva, while readable enough, lacks any real depth of personality.
Ultimately, Made for You is a rather disappointing read from a writer who is
truly excellent when on top of her game.
For those looking for a genuinely compelling story of a similar ilk, I
highly recommend Kimberly Derting’s Body
Finder series while Barry Lyga writes a truly terrifying killer in his
acclaimed I Hunt Killers. For those wanting to try out Melissa Marr as
a writer, her Wicked Lovely series
really is great as is her adult offering, Graveminder
– start with these and perhaps leave Made for You for another day.
This review was brought to you by Splendibird really wishes that she'd liked the book more. Thank you to the publisher for sending us this title to review.
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