The Book Tour Stops Here: A Review of 'Made For You' by Melissa Marr

A very quick stop on the TLC Blog Tour today for Made For You  a young-adult mystery / thriller by Melissa Marr. I'm on a business trip this week and this book was glued to my hand for the (very long) plane rides, as I didn't want to put it down until I found who the killer was. Eva is the "it girl" of her local high school and her family is practically royalty in their status conscious southern town. When Eva is hit by a car and left by the roadside, she wants to believe it is a random hit and run. When more of her high school friends end up dead, it becomes apparent that someone is obsessed with Eva. The accident also leaves Eva with the strange ability to see a person's death when they touch her. 

Publisher's Blurb:

When Eva Tilling wakes up in the hospital, she’s confused – who in her sleepy little North Carolina town could have hit her with their car? Before she can consider the question, she finds that she’s awoken with a strange new skill: the ability to foresee people’s deaths when they touch her.

As she recovers from the attempt on her life, an old flame, Nate, turns up. Eva must traverse their rocky past and figure out how to use her new power – while the killer grows increasingly frantic. Can she stop him, or will he claim her?

For the first time, New York Times bestselling author Melissa Marr has applied her extraordinary talent to contemporary realism. Chilling twists, unrequited obsession, and high-stakes romance drive this racy thriller that Melissa’s devoted fans and new readers alike will find enthralling.

Hardcover: 368 pages
Publisher: HarperCollins (September 16, 2014)

My Thoughts:

Young adult isn't always my first choice for reading material but I have read a couple of the author's other books and I enjoy the creepy vibe she brings to her writing. Although Made For You doesn't have the paranormal focus of some of her books, Marr still brings out the creepy full force--in Eva's foreshadowing of deaths and even more so in the insanity of the killer. The killer, who calls himself "Judge"--is so madly and utterly obsessed with Eva and so confident in his belief that they belong together, he finds his actions to be just and necessary to 'save' Eva. Marr builds the suspense and tension by keeping the identity of the killer a secret until the final quarter of the book while tossing in clues, twists and turns that kept me guessing and changing my mind about the killer's identity. The story is told primarily from Eva's point of view, interspersed with the points of view of the killer and Eva's best friend Grace. I especially liked having the killer's thoughts because it gave glimpses of his background and some explanation to why he turned out to be the way he was. Eva was a likeable character--although somewhat complacent in her life of projecting the right image for her crowd before the accident, she was still strong enough to make Grace, an outsider to her social group, her best friend. I liked both smart and supportive Grace, and broody Nate--Eva's childhood best friend who reconnects with Eva after the accident after not speaking to her for years. I was more interested in solving the mystery than the romance between Eva and Nate and thought that there was a good balance to both in the book. Made For You is smartly-written, will engage mystery and suspense lovers of all all ages, and is a good book when you are in the mood for a creepy page-turner. 

Author Notes: Melissa Marr is the author of the internationally bestselling Wicked Lovely series (currently available in 26 languages). In adult fiction, she is the author of the award-winning novel, Graveminder, and the newly released, The Arrivals. With Kelley Armstrong, Melissa is the co-editor of two anthologies and co-author of the Blackwell Pages trilogy (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers), a children’s series about the Norse myth of Ragnarök. Her upcoming HarperCollins 2014 release, Made For You, utilizes both her graduate degree in Southern Literature and her personal experience with stalkers in a story about a killer who terrorizes a small North Carolina town. Melissa lives in Virginia with her family. You can visit her online at www.melissamarrbooks.com.
 

Note: A review copy of "Made For You" was provided by the publisher and TLC Book Tours in return for a fair and honest review. I was not compensated for this review and as always my thoughts and opinions are my own. 
 
You can see the stops for the rest of the TLC Book Tours and Reviews here.