Review: Everything You Want Me to Be by Mindy Mejia

Everything You Want Me to Be by Mindy Mejia

Blurb from Goodreads:

Full of twists and turns, Everything You Want Me to Be reconstructs a year in the life of a dangerously mesmerizing young woman, during which a small town’s darkest secrets come to the forefront...and she inches closer and closer to her death.

High school senior Hattie Hoffman has spent her whole life playing many parts: the good student, the good daughter, the good citizen. When she’s found brutally stabbed to death on the opening night of her high school play, the tragedy rips through the fabric of her small town community. Local sheriff Del Goodman, a family friend of the Hoffmans, vows to find her killer, but trying to solve her murder yields more questions than answers. It seems that Hattie’s acting talents ran far beyond the stage. Told from three points of view—Del, Hattie, and the new English teacher whose marriage is crumbling—Everything You Want Me to Be weaves the story of Hattie’s last school year and the events that drew her ever closer to her death.

Evocative and razor-sharp, Everything You Want Me to Be challenges you to test the lines between innocence and culpability, identity and deception. Does love lead to self-discovery—or destruction? 

My Review:
 

I don't know what I expected this book to be, exactly, but it was one of those books that grabs from its first sentence to its last.  There is some meandering between timelines and it's told in three POV but it all just worked. I read this one so fast because I was so intrigued and I did not see the ending coming.  I thought I had it figured it out but that was turned on its head at the very end and I loved that! This was my second 2017 release and both it and History of Wolves are set in Minnesota.  Totally unplanned but it was very interesting to think about both book in that context - one in the north of the state and this one in the south. They were both stoic and stark in their own ways. I would also be remiss if I didn't tell you that this author created one of the best formed, articulated and complex characters I've ever read in Hattie Hoffman - such an effortless read but I am sure that writing it took everything.

Everything You Want Me To Be came out earlier this week on January 3, 2017, and you can purchase HERE.  I definitely recommend this one if you like a good mystery!

Out of nowhere I remembered my grandpa's silent, tear-streaked face in that depressing nursing home room. It was probably the last time anyone should be thinking about their dead grandfather, like some final proof of how unnatural I was, but in that moment I understood, finally, how love could be too much for our bodies to hold.