She Treads Softly: Made You Look

Tuesday, October 28, 2025

Made You Look

Made You Look by Tanya Grant
11/18/25; 368 pages
Berkley

Made You Look by Tanya Grant is a recommended locked room psychological thriller following a group of social media influencers. This is more suitable for new adult readers or those who live their lives watching influencer content or reality TV.

A group of social media influencers head off to the Catskills for a free getaway at a new secluded retreat. All they need to do is post their vapid content, advertising the retreat to their followers. After they arrive they discover that there is no food, no staff, and very unreliable to no Wi-Fi. When a snow storm hits the group is completely cut off. It is then a killer strikes.

The group includes Sydney Kent, the ultimate It Girl; Caitlyn, another striving influencer; Lucy, a photographer; Jeff, Sydney’s boyfriend and an influencer; Nash, a stylist; and Brent, their manager. The narrative is told through the point-of-view of Lucy, Sydney, and Caitlyn. None of them are reliable narrators and every one of them is annoying, irritating, and insufferable in some way and at some point. They are also all foolish.

It's not that it's a completely bad. This is a debut novel, the plot moves quickly, and it is a new updated take on a locked room thriller. The initial premise does grab your attention, and it is entertaining to see how many incredibly poor decisions they could make. Additionally, there are hopeful signs for Grant's next novel.

That said, once you start reading it becomes quite clear that there are better locked-room thrillers out there for adult readers that feature a more diverse cast of characters and create more intrigue. It felt like this novel targeted a much younger audience, either a YA or new adult reader - someone who actual follows the often insipid, uninformed, self-promoting content of the kind of influencers portrayed in the novel.

Made You Look by Tanya Grant is recommended for YA or new adult readers. Thanks to Berkley Publishing Group for providing me with an advance reader's copy via NetGalley. My review is voluntary and expresses my honest opinion.

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John Updike's six rules for reviewing:

1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

2. Give him enough direct quotation--at least one extended passage--of the book's prose so the review's reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.

4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending.

5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's oeuvre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it's his and not yours?

To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser.....Review the book, not the reputation.... Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys in reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.