I have a lot of feelings about punctuation and the lack thereof. It is not very challenging to do punctuation correctly, thus I have little patience for silly errors. It is a huge decision to choose to ignore conventional grammatical standards, and if you are going to make this decision, the payoff better be worth it. (And yes, sometimes it is. Of recent memory--SEVERANCE, I'm looking at you.) But I think this is becoming a trope, a device authors are using to make something because they think it makes the book more unique or more gripping. It doesn't. Unless it's done really well and it adds something. Which is not the case with this book. (Look, I'm defying grammatical conventions myself and using choppy sentences--I'm such a hypocrite.)

This book was pretty eh, but it ended exactly a stop before I had to get off the train, so that was nice. Again with the thriller thing--too many are not living up to my expectations right now. ( )

YOU WERE MADE FOR THIS is a thriller that really gets under your skin. You feel that something is wrong right from the start, really really wrong. And as the story progresses do you just know that it will get worse.

Sam and Merry live happily together with their little son Conor in a small cabin in the forests around Sigtuna. Everything is perfect, life couldn't be better. Merry is the perfect wife and mother and she loves life in Sweden. Together with Sam, the breadwinner in the family is Merry now looking forward to seeing their son grow up in idyllic Sweden.

Is everything really that good and why is Merry worrying about her best friend Frank visiting? Is life in Sweden really that good as they are trying to make it out to be?

The book is told from three POV, Sam, Merry, and Frank. And the picture they are showing is not that idyllic, vice versa instead. The last part of the book is actually quite chilling and really shows that the image we have of a person can be horrifying wrong.

YOU WERE MADE FOR THIS is a frightening thriller about the masks we humans are wearing that you can never know everything about each other. It also shows that childhood traumas can have consequences later in life. Who knows what kind of person you have married or do you really know your best friend?

I want to thank Southside Stories for providing me with a free copy for an honest review! ( )

Please note that I received this book via NetGalley. This did not impact my rating or review.

Huge sigh. This book was a mess. At first I was momentarily intrigued because the book seemed to be setting up things with the husband in this story (Sam) to be sinister. All of his rules for mothers/wives seemed to be playing that way. But then you get further into the book, and when Merry's "best friend" Frank comes to visit, the book just goes freaking dark. I just needed something to break up this mess. There was nothing redeeming about a single character. You don't even get a semblance of characters getting their just desserts. Instead you know that it seems that the cycle will continue again in maybe 10 or 20 years. This book gets one star for taking place in Sweden. That's about it.

"You Were Made for This" is about a husband and wife (Sam and Merry) who move to Sweden to live in a house that is left to Sam. There are some allusions to something happening that caused the family to move. But you never get the full details. Just other characters blurting out things later on dozens of pages later.

Sam is happy in Sweden, but struggling to make ends meet. He used to be a professor at a university in New York. And now is trying to be a filmmaker.

Merry used to be a set decorator (that sounded cool and wish we had gotten more details about) but is now a full time mother to her son Conor. Merry is not feeling seen anymore as a stay at home mother. Instead she is trying to follow the rules for motherhood that Sam seems to think she needs to do (which includes making homemade baby food and scrubbing the whole house with organic ingredients). Merry I was initially sympathetic to, but Sacks blows that away pretty quickly when you find out about the darkness in Merry. Merry is dreading, but also wants her best friend Frances (known as Frank) to come visit.

Frank and Merry have a toxic friendship. There is no other word for it. I just could not with Frank once you saw everything she had done in the past, and what she currently did in this book. Her talking about being the only one to "see" Merry was just head shaking to me.

Merry wants to show off for Frank to show her "that she's won" and Frank is not worth as much since she's not married and has no children. That could have been an interesting dynamic with two women who chose two different paths. Heck even show the dark side of motherhood and talk about post par-tum depression. Instead we don't get that at all.

Sam is obviously awful, you don't really get why Merry wants to be with him. You do get why he wants to be with her though. He has someone to mold into whatever he wants. There are some hints there that something dark happened to Sam. Once again though, you don't know since the author doesn't like to spell things out. I for one got really tired of people talking past things.

The secondary characters that we get (there are barely any) don't figure into this book at all really. We have Merry and Sam's closest neighbors who are there merely to move the plot along.

I really didn't like the writing. The multiple POVs with Merry, Sam, and Frank didn't help. They all started to sound the same after a while (psychopaths with the need for instant gratification). And the book started to feel endless after a while along with being repetitive.

The setting of Sweden was the only reason why I gave this book a star. I was intrigued about the location, the mention of the lakes, the ability to be truly alone if you want to be in the place that Merry and Sam lived.

The ending was a mess. I think that Sacks should have changed the ending. It felt like such a waste to me to have to wade through this book for no reason in my opinion. I think she was going for a Gone Girl twist, but it didn't work. I just sighed really loudly at this point because you are given enough context clues that it seems the cycle would just continue for all parties. ( )

I must admit I’m not generally a fan of the domestic thriller. The ones I’ve looked at seem to present a very narrow view both of women and of families, and to favour pace over prose.

I thought I’d give this a go though, because it includes that endlessly fascinating trope of escaping the rat race to live the dream.

Merry and Sam are living with their baby in rural Sweden, in a cottage he inherited from a relative. He is trying to establish himself as a filmmaker, she is caring for their baby, baking and growing vegetables. They have left their home in New York under slightly murky circumstances.

We see first the beauty of this new life, then its downsides. It is the arrival of Merry’s childhood friend, Frank (Frances), that brings things to a head.

The positive about this book is that the writing is gorgeous. You get a real sense of the beauty of the Swedish countryside and the appeal of the life they are living. Later, you see how the same setting can be claustrophobic and threatening. It’s the ideal combination – you get to both bask in Merry and Sam’s idyllic lifestyle, and to see it fall apart and realise it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.

I didn’t enjoy the story, though. In part this is to do with the structure of the book. We already see the problems in Merry and Sam’s life before Frank’s arrival, then we have to repeat the same journey from envy to disillusionment from her point of view. When the crisis happens in their lives, there is a police investigation in which the protagonists are interviewed and go over much of the same ground yet again.

More than this, though, I found this book profoundly depressing in what it says about women. There are various archetypes in the book, all of them negative. Frank is successful in her career and travels the world but it’s only because her mother didn’t love her enough. She’d give it up in a heartbeat to have what Merry has.

Merry feels confined by her new life but can’t think what else to do. Sam takes it for granted that Merry should do all the household chores. Neither Merry nor Frank seem to think any less of him for it, nor to question what they themselves expect.

The three protagonists are depressingly predictable. There is no grit that makes them run against type, no sense that they have complex emotions and drives that exist beyond the frame of the story. I had a strong reaction to the twist at the end, but I don’t think it was the one I was meant to have.

Sam is a former anthropologist with an interest in masks and Merry was a set designer. They are interesting choices but I didn’t feel the implications were explored. Are these characters more interesting than they appear? Has their potential been stifled by the limited roles they are allowed to play? Or were they made for this?
*
I received a copy of You Were Made for This from the publisher via Netgalley.
This review first appeared on my blog katevane.com/blog ( )

This twisting, dark, unsettling thriller has a first person narration from each of the three principal characters. Each one is manipulative, deceitful and due to traumas suffered in their childhood, deeply psychologically flawed. You are therefore faced with the a story where you have increasing difficulty in empathising with the protagonists which in some ways makes the book a more challenging and rewarding read.

The story is set in the Swedish countryside where an American married couple Sam and Merry live an ostensibly happy and contented existence with their baby son. Sam has inherited their house from his step grandmother and they have worked hard to renovate the house and clear the overgrown surrounds. It would appear that life is idyllic for them as they live the Swedish dream. But as in many a good thriller appearances can be deceptive and little by little we learn that things are certainly not what they seem and dark secrets abound and the cracks will appear and soon consume all. A happy devoted mother, wonderful neighbours, it is all on the surface.

About a quarter of the way into the book Merry’s childhood friend Frances comes to stay with them. Childhood friend would perhaps not be the most apt description as they have gown up more like twin sisters in a loving/hate relationship that the book describes tellingly as "interchangeable". Frances can see that Merry is living a lie but equally Merry can see through Frances's motivations. After each narration another layer is revealed that helps to explain the complex set of relationships between the characters that lie at the heart of this story. At times I must admit it became quite difficult to read as you somehow know that there was some hidden horror just waiting to happen. The chill in the air as the long summer nights turned into autumn was somehow symbolic of this.

This towards the end certainly became somewhat of a page turner and the last sentence in the story raises still more questions as we try to foresee how the future may pan out. This I understand is Michelle Sacks's debut novel and the author is to be congratulated for producing such a gripping tale that explores the darker side of the human condition. A recommended but at times painful read. ( )