Mystery! Twisting suspense! Fascinating read which held my attention. I mistakenly thought I had it all figured out; Ms. Mejia writes so fabulously that you think you know...but you don't until the final page is turned!

I received a copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley. The opinions expressed are my own.

Unfortunately, I could just not get into this book. I tried three times. I'm choosing not to rate it because that wouldn't be fair to the book/author. I hope to someday try it again.

Just when I thought I knew what happened to Hattie Hoffman, the story surprised me. Turning herself into what others want and/or need has gotten Hattie what she thinks she's always wanted. When she learns better, she decides to stop acting and be true to herself. Only her boyfriend, her lover, her friends and her family didn't know how to account for her sudden change. The supporting characters were interesting and layered as well as the characters whose voices we heard.

I did not at first expect to respond to this book as I did. I thought I'd like different characters than I did. I never quite expected the book to unveil as it did. Indeed, after the first few chapters I found myself putting off things to do in favor of finishing. This is well worth the read,, full of turns and unexpected byways.

Thank you, NetGalley, for the advanced digital copy of this book!!

I thoroughly enjoyed this book! Told from three differing viewpoints, it gives a very good picture of a teenage girl who "doesn't fit" the mold everyone wants for her. Hattie Hoffman is a high school senior who long ago learned to play the part that others had assigned her. Good daughter, good employee, good student, good actress, good friend, you name it, she has it DOWN. But who is she really? Even she doesn't know..............

When she is brutally murdered, there are a lot of suspects, and none. Everyone loved her, right?

The story is a very good mystery - I didn't EVER figure it out, and I am pretty good at that! I hope to hear more from this author.

Now that is how a psychological thriller should be done! Except it has all the other elements of a mystery, family drama, and even young adult.
This book made me emotional-because being a mother, it brought up thoughts and fears that all parents have about losing a child.
Overall, I couldn't stop flipping the pages and this kept me up till the early morning wanting to know what would happen. I also really enjoyed that it was split into different character narratives.
I look forward to reading the authors next book.

I sincerely would like to thank Mindy Mejia and Atria Books for the opportunity to read and review this. I went ahead and bought myself a copy and have it currently loaned to my friend because more people should read this one.

I didn't intend to give this book 5 stars, but by the end I felt it had earned it.

I'm going to echo others I know who have read this and say that it was a great mystery/thriller, that kept taking turns I didn't expect all throughout the book. That's part of why it earned the 5-star rating for me.

Why else? Because, while I seem to find something to gripe about in everything I've read lately, I don't know that I have anything to gripe about with this one. The characters were well drawn and sympathetic, even as you weren't quite sure if they were good. They were nuanced, complex, and had complex relationships with other characters. The small down setting no doubt helped highlight the connections between characters and how they felt about one another.

The shifting perspectives really worked for me here. I am almost always thrown by shifting perspectives when the timelines also shift, and this book was no exception for me on that front. It took a few shifts back and forth before I could really keep track of which pieces of the story were taking place when. I think the alternating chapters also worked so well because they provided the reader insight into the key players of the story. It was particularly interesting to watch Del try to piece things together throughout the murder investigation, since the reader already had some of the answers he did not, but counted on him to find the pieces they were missing. The shifts between characters were also perfectly timed to build suspense and put the puzzle pieces together. No one's story seemed unnecessary or out of place, and the pacing was steady throughout.

What really tends to win me over with a book, though, is well-drawn characters who feel like real people. And, with the possible exception of Hattie herself, I felt that in this book. Even Hattie, while she is unusual in her thoughts and actions, turns out to be more real than she seems originally. Peter was perhaps the most fascinating to me, though, because while I'm sure I should have found him sort of reprehensible, I mostly just felt sad for him, and was as torn as he was about what choices he should make. And yet even as I write that, I think of things from Del's and Hattie's chapters that I loved just as much, and made me feel for them as characters as well. Okay, so maybe I'm just more intrigued than anything by Hattie and her borderline sociopathic tendencies, but I still loved her chapters.

I also loved the literary references thrown in and serving as the real symbol of connection between Peter and Hattie. This could be because I love Jane Eyre and Macbeth, but I also think those two pieces of literature served the story very well, without feeling too heavy-handed in terms of overshadowing or allusion.

I really just can't think of anything I didn't like about this. It was a win for me.

Twitteresque reviews are for books where I never wrote a full review but I want to give you a flavour of how I felt during the book. All in 140 characters or less! I normal have a mixed bag of ratings on these, but this time, these were all books I LOVED.

TWITTERESQUE REVIEW:

A great book to get sucked into if you enjoy dark, complex characters and like to be kept guessing.

'I'm everything you want me to be, but no one knows who I really am.' That little blurb right there is what made me want to read this book. Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with a free copy to read and review. This thriller is told through the eyes of the 3 main characters, Hattie, Del and Peter. She is a high school student with grand illusions of moving to NYC and becoming an actress along the way she falls in love with Peter and inadvertently destroys the lives of so many in her community. Del is the Sheriff and close family friend who has known Hattie and her parents for so long. He is out to solve the mystery of Hattie and soon discovers that she was not who she appeared to be. Peter was a pathetic man who should have known better but allowed himself to be seduced by Hattie little by little. The most likeable persons were Del and the clueless Tommy. I really love books that are told thru the characters eyes and allow you to see and hear their thoughts. The flow of the story was very good and kept me interested from the start. Ms Mejia does a wonderful job of moving the story along at a good pace. She keeps you guessing and ties up the story a little better than we would expect or want. A fabulous read that leaves you thinking how one action can destroy so many lives.

If you are looking for another solid thriller, I have to say that Everything You Want Me To Be was excellent and had me guessing up until the final pages. Hattie Hoffman has always spent her life dutifully dong exactly what she is supposed to. It shocks the town when Hattie is found brutally stabbed to death since no one could ever imagine something like that would happen to someone who is so perfect.
Ah, but things aren’t what they seem and Hattie has a few secrets up her sleeve that include a scandalous relationship that leave the reader guessing just who would have wanted Hattie dead more. I really enjoyed this one and Mejia carves a few smart twists that I think you will really enjoy. I couldn’t put this one down and finished it in a single day!

3.5/5 This is one of those stories that picks up the more you listen to the book. It's told through multiple points of view the main being Hattie, an eighteen year old who was found stabbed to death. You also hear Peter, a teacher at the high school Hattie is having an affair with and the police chief investigating her murder. I didn't guess ahead of time who the murderer was so the story did keep me invested. I'd recommend this to anyone who likes murder mysteries.

Hattie is 17 and has always felt like an outsider in her small hometown in Minnesota. She dreams of the day she graduates from high school and can run off to New York City. Her senior year begins and the school has a new English teacher, a young, married man, who will change her life forever. Peter and his wife have moved back to his wife’s hometown to care for his ailing mother-in-law, a woman who seems to hate him. As his wife becomes more and more involved with her mother’s care, Peter starts to feel like the odd man out, and he misses the vibrancy of their life in Minneapolis. Just a few weeks before graduation Hattie is found dead in an abandoned barn and suddenly the whole town suspects Peter. Will the local police chief be able to unravel the secrets of Hattie’s life and catch a murderer?

I found the mystery in this book to be a fascinating one with plenty of twists to keep you guessing. There is a lot of angst being worked out in this story. Both the teenage variety, as Hattie is straining against her small town life, and Peter’s more adult variety, as he struggles with a troubled marriage and a life that is not fulfilling to him. The author has done a great job in crafting her main characters in a way that makes them appealing to the reader and also draws the reader in to the story. “Everything You Want Me to Be” is a great story and should appeal to a broad range of readers. I highly recommend it!

It was an enjoyable whodunnit, with multiple points of view and several misdirects. I thought that most of the characters were really well drawn. There were a few plot points that I wish were fleshed out a little more, because they seemed important but then weren't used much. But on the whole it was a great story.

Oh boy, where to start?? I had a tough time getting into this book at first. I'm not sure if I was having trouble connecting with the characters, if I wasn't in the mood to read it on my device or if I just wanted the story to move faster. Regardless, after a little less than half way through, I was hooked and couldn't put it down! The characters seemed to have more depth, the relationships became more intertwined, and I just had to know what happened - who killed Hattie? I highly recommend this book if you like the psychological thriller genre. Thank you to NetGalley and Atria Books for allowing me to read and review this title. I look forward to watching this author in the future!

The first chapter delivers a promising central character that we don't get enough of. I'd have liked this story much more had it followed a natural timeline, allowing us to see a fairly complex young woman to her brutal end.

Hattie's story unfolds in a mixture of perspectives, and on two different timelines. It started slowly for me, and I had to put it down and pick it back up multiple times before I really got into it. Once I finally did, I was hooked. I was kept guessing all the way until the very end.

My biggest regret is that this book is not available now in physical form. It would be a great gift for just about every booklover I know!

Put this on your TBR list, friends--and then clear your schedule. I'm betting you'll have a hard time putting it down.

Everything You Want Me To Be is Mindy Mejia's second novel.

Hattie Hoffman is in her last year of high school in a small town. She dreams of moving to New York and becoming the person she wants to be. Only Hattie knows who that is. You see, she changes herself to suit who she is with - family, friends, neighbours, boyfriend - and where she is - alone, school, home or on the stage. Hattie is the consummate actress. And it's going to get her killed......

"Fit the character to the play. You knew you were playing it right when your audience was happy." "I was a million different things depending on who I talked to or how I felt."

The reader is told of Hattie's death in the first chapters. From there the timeline flips from past to present, told in three voices - Hattie's, Del - the local Sheriff tasked with finding her killer, and Peter, her high school English teacher.

Hattie is a complicated character. I did like her drive and dreams. But on the other hand, how she tries to achieve them is at the expense of others and her manipulations left a sour taste in my mouth. But do we ever know who the real Hattie is? Peter - well, I have no words for him. He is shallow, weak and self deceptive. There are other characters that we only come to know through the interactions with the three main characters. Peter's wife Mary, without having a voice of her own, was the one character I was quite drawn to. Del, the Sheriff, is the other character who I sided with.

Mejia's plot explores many different relationships and themes. Innocence, guilt, lust, love, deception and more. And at the heart of it all - who killed Hattie? I liked the slow pacing of the investigation as Del puzzles out the whodunit without the benefit of the reader's inside knowledge. And the final reveal wasn't who I expected.

Everything You Want Me To Be was a different read, but quite good. I would pick up another book by Mejia.

A strong book, this one surprised me. It's well put together, and the story line plays out along side one of Shakespeare's plays, Macbeth. As the fire burns, so does the life of Katie Hoffman. Her body is found in an old barn, gone the dreams of the big stage after getting out of her small town life. This book has three main characters, and their points of view. It's intertwined around life, and death and the mystery of who killed Katie. It reaches deep in places, and yet can be very easy to read for the most part. Do you fake who you are, or do you allow the real you to show?

My copy came from Net Galley. I leave this review of my choosing. My thoughts and opinions are my own.