EVERYTHING YOU WANT ME TO BE
Standalone
Mindy Mejia
BLURB
No one knows who she really is…
Hattie Hoffman has spent her whole life playing many parts: the good student, the good daughter, the good girlfriend. But Hattie wants something more, something bigger, and ultimately something that turns out to be exceedingly dangerous. When she’s found brutally stabbed to death, the tragedy rips right through the fabric of her small-town community.
It soon comes to light that Hattie was engaged in a highly compromising and potentially explosive secret online relationship. The question is: Did anyone else know? And to what lengths might they have gone to end it? Hattie’s boyfriend seems distraught over her death, but had he fallen so deeply in love with her that she had become an obsession? Or did Hattie’s impulsive, daredevil nature simply put her in the wrong place at the wrong time, leading her to a violent death at the hands of a stranger?
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 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?
★★★★
*3.5 stars*
An interesting read surrounding the murder of a girl who completely lacks a self-identity. Hattie is excellent at playing the role of whomever she is “expected” to be, switching from one persona to the next as a chameleon changes colors. To say Hattie is misunderstood would be an understatement—she’s sort of a contradiction.
There isn’t a single person Hattie won’t alter herself to please, yet she’s very self-aware and knows exactly where her choices will lead her.(Well, almost.) She is young and erratic, talented and relentless, and she’s harboring one killer of a secret.
This story is told in first person and alternates between three narrators, Hattie included. The transitions are smooth and the characters distinct. The plot takes a slow and steady path that leads up to Hattie’s death, offering some well-played out twists along the way. I appreciated its focus of self-discovery and self-destruction, and I’d definitely give the ending a mental fist pump. All-in-all, a GOOD read—I liked it, I did. But I can’t help feeling that the actual “idea” of this captivated me just a little bit more.
Although I wouldn’t necessarily call this an edge-of-your-seat kind of thriller, I do feel most fans of the genre will enjoy this one! Plus, it’s hard to pass up that boding title and beautiful cover. I mean, I couldn’t…
