Get Your Copy Everything You Want Me To Be Produced By Mindy Mejia Published As Visual Format
a small town girl who is soon to graduate high school, has big dreams of acting and moving to New York, She loves to actin fact her whole life can be described as one long play, with her changing into multiple characters, depending on whom she is interacting with.
This is the story of Hattie's last year on Earth, as she is found murdered in a barn on the opening night of her last high school play.
Told throughvoices, Hattie's, the small town detective, and Peter, the high school drama teacher
the story goes back in time and builds up to Hattie's final moments, and leading to the big reveal.
While there was some predictability here, I found this to be an easy and entertaining read with good characters and some nice twists to throw me off the scent.
At one point I thought I knew who the killer was, Then I changed my mind to someone else, then again I changed to someone completely different, In the end, I went back to my original suspect who did turn out to be the killer, but I enjoyed being lead astray!
I look forward to more from this author and highly recommend!
ARC from NetGalley
sitelinkEverything You Want Me to Be
Stars!
"You say you're just acting, but you're fracturing yourself into a thousand pieces, and every time I see another piece, you're gone again.From Everything you Want Me To Be
You turn into someone else, a crowd of someone elses, and it makes me wonder if there's any such thing as Hattie Hoffman",
I received a free advance ecopy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review, thank you!
The narrative of this novel revolves around a crucial question: Can we truly get to know someone, or at least a person that is really close to us
At, Henrietta Hattie Hoffman is one of those precocious teenagers who, in the cusp of adulthood believes she has everything figured out.
On the surface Hattie appears to be a welladjusted girl about to graduate high school, She is talented, popular and looking forward to starting life after school pursuing her dreams of becoming a professional actress,
But Hattie possesses two very distinctive qualities: she is a masterful manipulator and is capable of transforming herself into anyone and anything people want her to be.
It is not surprising then that Hattie chooses to become an actress: the theater provides the ideal platform to make use of her talents,
By the time the curtain of the second chapter opens though, we learn that Hattie's promising life has been tragically cut short, Her body is found in an abandoned barn a few hours after her last performance as Lady Macbeth at her high school auditorium,
Everything You Want Me To Be is set in a small town in Minnesota, The story is told in the form of flashbacks narrated by three protagonists: Dell Goodman is the sheriff in charge of investigating the murder, he is also a close friend of the Hoffmans, Peter Lund is Hattie's literature and drama teacher and someone with whom she becomes involves via an internet chat room, lastly Hattie herself is the third narrator.
I thought Mejia skillfully made use of this threepart narrative, which not only complement each other but also give the novel a balanced and riveting pace.
All three of these characters have distinctive and unique voices, but is no doubt Hattie, who from the very beginning has our undivided attention,
The relationship we develop with her is, to put it mildly, complicated, No sooner are we are amused by one of her pranks or charmed by her wit and shrewd sense of humor, than
we find ourselves appalled by the great lengths she is willing to go in order to get what she wants.
The challenge for an author writing a whodunit is keeping readers engaged once they know what the outcome of the story is in this case we've learned very early that Hattie is dead.
But as suspects emerge, new motives are considered and secrets get revealed, Mejia challenge us with a few morally ambiguous questions,
Was Hattie's own arrogance and penchant for conceit the culprit of her own demise Is she the victim or the villain of this story At what age is someone completely responsible for her actions
I thoroughly enjoyed the author's sardonic sense of humor as well as the literary references she uses, giving the novel a quirky and charming quality.
As a side note, I think fans will be delighted by the author's obvious reverence for the oldest Brontë sister and her shout out to sitelinkJane Eyre.
There are lots of mysteries thrillers to choose from these days, a plethora of which seem to include the word "girl" on the title, And of course by now it has become a cliché to name every new thriller the next sitelinkGone Girl, but this is one instance in which I think the comparisons to Flynn's über popular novel might be actually warranted.
Everything You Want Me To Be is one of those deliciously twisted stories that allow us to indulge our morbid tendencies without feeling too guilty about them.
So kudos to the author for writing a highly addictive crime mystery that manages to entertain without insulting our intelligence,
One final note for my fellow audiophiles, the audiobook introduced me to three new voices, I especially liked the performances of the two male narrators, The novel's easytofollow format and fast pace made for a breezy and enjoyable listening, .