What I’m Reading: Everything You Want Me to Be

I just finished up listening the audio book Everything You Want Me to Be: A Novel by Mindy Mejia.

I saw this book available through my on line library.  I was looking for something that was something NOT historical fiction.  I love it but every so often I need something different.  I put a hold on it and finally my turn came.

I had lots of books in that needed to be listened to at the time and was worried I wouldn’t get to this one…but after two chapters, I worried no more.  I was into the book and found ways to keep listening.  That’s how I know I really like a book.

This is a murder mystery.  It takes place in “Pine Valley” Minnesota which is a fictional place near Rochester Minnesota.  We lived in that area for a long time and have family that lives around there.  It made the book feel like something that could have easily happened in the small town we lived near then with references to the Apache Mall, Mayo Clinic and the like.  I LOVED that!

Here’s what Amazon had to say:“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 readers gave the book 4.3 stars…I am going with 4.6.  I really liked the book.  I love that the story is told from alternating view points.  I love the “folksy” descriptions of the towns folk.  I love the twists and not knowing the ending until truly the end.  I recommend this one!