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?

Amazon

My Review

After I read Leave No Trace by Mindy Mejia, it was so good that I put this book on my Christmas list in 2019. Little did I know what a crazy year 2020 was going to be! I decided that I’m going to read the books I got that Christmas come hell or high water.

I was not disappointed! I stayed up until 3:00am finishing Everything You Want Me To Be last night (this morning). I had to see what was going to happen to these poor messed up people!

I don’t usually like when books skip around, but it worked in this book. After Hattie’s body is found murdered, it switches back and forth from the current investigation to what happened before Hattie’s murder. There are some twists, and there were several possible killers, so I shouldn’t have been surprised by the outcome, but it was a surprise!

Although the characters were well-developed, and I had to keep reading to find out what happened to them, I didn’t like them. Hattie is a good actress and acts as the person everyone wants her to be: the good student, the good daughter, the good friend, the good girlfriend…until she falls in love with the wrong person and decides it’s time to tell the truth and follow her dream. Hattie is innocent in some ways, but she’s manipulative and ends up only caring about what she wants. Her boyfriend is dumb as a rock, and she doesn’t care about him. She’s just using him. Peter Lund, her teacher, tries to do the right thing, and he’s tormented when he doesn’t.

I definitely recommend Everything You Want Me To Be but be warned. Once you get into it, you won’t be able to put it down!

About the Author

My name is Mindy Mejia and I’m a writer. I write because, ever since I was six years old, my favorite game has been pretend. My life doesn’t have symmetry, theme, symbolism, or meditated beauty and I gravitate toward these things like a houseplant to the sun. I love the perfect words; I love how “fierce” and “confounded” and “swagger” look on the page and how my chest expands when I read them. I write because I believe in the reality of my fantasies, the truth in my fabrications. I’ve always had stories sneaking around my head, thrillers like THE DRAGON KEEPER and EVERYTHING YOU WANT ME TO BE, and sometimes I inhabit those stories more than my own life. (Best not to mention that last part to my husband, kids, or boss).

Website https://MindyMejia.com
Twitter MejiaWrites