Keeping secrets is not always a good thing. Lying to others in order to use them so that everything goes your way can be deadly.
This haunting story of secrets, love, manipulation, and murder is told from three points of view—Del, the small-town sheriff; Peter, the English teach caught in a marriage that is crumbling; and Hattie, the high school senior whose actions are inching her closer to death every moment.
These three characters are developed so well that you understand just what each one is going through. You truly get why the wrongs seem so right to them, you get why they do what they do, and your heart breaks when the inevitable happens.
Life in a small town is not the life that Hattie feels destined for. She sees a bright future ahead in New York City, a city of lights, opportunity, and action. She sees love with a man that she should not be involved with. Little does she realize the effects her plans of escape will have on her and on others.
Hattie’s confused and tormented thoughts are revealed through her own eyes as well as in her actions and the many parts she plays just to please others. But she no longer wants to fool people. She wants to live her life as she was meant to.
Finding her murderer is the focus of this small-town sheriff. So many times I thought I had figured out just who did it. I never did get it right, at least not until this person’s identity was revealed. This is one of those books that will stay with you long after you have finished it.
I was sent a copy of this book by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. If you would like a copy of this book for yourself, I’ve provided an Amazon link below.
Amazon Link: Everything You Want Me to Be
open up to imagination, www.studentpulse.com
Favorite Sentences:
I took a step closer, compelled beyond reason toward this girl who kept shredding masks like a matryoshka doll, each one more audacious than the last, a psychological striptease that racked me with the need to tear her apart until I found out who or what was inside.
She had taken everything I thought I was and destroyed it with a coy wink in the middle of a chaotic classroom.
Apologies were for spilled drinks and bumps in the hallway; they were the courtesies of people whose lives progressed along predictable, uncomplicated arcs.
She was seething now, months of silent rage finally overflowing and finding purchase inside these concrete and steel walls.
New Words Learned:
Hmong – a member of a people living traditionally in isolated mountain villages throughout Southeast Asia. Large numbers have immigrated to the US.
pho – a North Vietnamese soup made of beef or chicken stock with rice noodles and thin slices of beef or chicken
pissant – a person or thing of no value or consequence; a despicable person or thing.
poleaxe – to strike down or kill with or as if with a poleax. A poleaxe can be a medieval shafted weapon with blade combining ax, hammer, and apical spike, used for fighting on foot. It can also be an ax, usually with a hammer opposite the cutting edge, used in stunning and slaughtering animals. Or it can be an ax with both a blade and a hook, formerly used in naval warfare to assist sailors in boarding vessels.
About the Author:
Mindy Mejia is a fiction writer, finance manager, weekend jogger, wife, and mother of two. She writes what she likes to read—contemporary, plot-driven novels that deliver both entertainment and substance. She lives in the Twin Cities and is currently working on a project that might or might not be a trilogy. Learn more about Mindy at www.MindyMejia.com.
