This was a brilliant read. As soon as I started reading this book I just knew I was going to love it. Highly recommended

When 18 year old Hattie is found brutally stabbed the town are grieving and must piece together what happened.
This was a middling read and will keep you engrossed but not totally gripped.

The first half of the book was a bit of a slow burner for me as I struggled to keep up with the timeline due to the story being told from 3 different viewpoints. I found the second half more enjoyable and was keen to keep reading to find out if my theory about 'whodunnit' was correct.....it wasn't!

An enjoyable book overall - 3 stars.

First of all a huge thank you to Netgalley and Quercus Books for the free copy in exchange for an honest review. I was absolutely delighted when I received a copy of this book. The beautiful cover got my attention right away. I just loved the colours and image and it fits the story perfectly.
17 year old Hattie Hoffmann was born and raised in Pine Valley, Minnesota. A small rural town where she feels totally out of place. Desperate to fit in she decides to act her wat through live and perform the way people expect her to be. She is a natural and can easily switch roles. The only time she can truly be herself is when she is on the online forum Pulse where she can talk literature and art and share her love for New York City. When she starts chatting to a guy called LitGeek she feels a connection she never felt with anyone before. Although in complete anonynimity, she can finaly truly be herself. When her contact with LitGeek intensifies and turns romantic she can't stop thinking about him. However when their true identities are unexpectedly revealed things start to spiraal out of controle.
This book had me hooked from the first page. I really liked the fact that the story is told by various narrators and although they were all very different, I sympathized with all of them. Their beliefs and motivations were both understandible and credible. The description of live in a rural small town community painted a vivid picture. The atmosphere of the book, the suspense and the desperation felt by the main characters were tangible. The ending broke my heart. This story is the kind that will stay with me for a long time and the reason why I love reading.

The truth is always complicated.....

Restless, talented Hattie Hoffman, eighteen years old, is a girl who knows what she wants and is determined to get it. But all her hopes and plans are cut cruelly short when Hattie is found dead - stabbed to death in an isolated barn near her home in rural Minnesota. Who could have done this to her? And who, among all the roles she played, is the real Hattie Hoffman?

Narrated in turn by local sheriff Del Goodman, by Hattie's English teacher Peter Lund, and by Hattie herself, the story of Hattie's last days gradually unfolds. This is a beautifully written book, as much - if not more - a study of characters and relationships as it is a murder mystery. The small farming community is brought vividly to life. Hattie herself is a complex and fascinating character: newly adult, a gifted actress capable of adopting whatever role appears to be called for, and it is in her portrayal that author Mindy Mejia really triumphs.

I enjoyed this thriller. Told from the perspectives of the murder victim, her schoolteacher and the local sheriff, multiple viewpoints highlight themes of identity, reality vs fantasy, and the dangerous consequences of manipulating people's expectations and desires.

WOW! This book is BRILLIANT!

This is one of those rare books that captivates, gets its hooks into you and refuses to let go. One of those books which causes you to snarl and growl like a rabid dog if anyone dares to try and interrupt your reading. Mindy Mejia is an outstanding author.

Hattie is a good girl. She has lots of friends, she is an excellent student, a model daughter, an accomplished amateur actress. Her brother Greg has been deployed to Afghanistan. Her parents have hardened their hearts to the probability that he may never return. They focus on Hattie; make her the centre of their lives. Then she is murdered............and the true Hattie slowly emerges.

Told from three points of view— the local sheriff, Hattie herself, and her new English teacher —Everything You Want Me to Be weaves the story of Hattie’s last school year and the events that drew her ever closer to her death.

This is a story that twists and turns. It is entirely plausible, realistic. It is breath-taking, stunning and haunting.

Thank you to NetGalley and Quercus for providing a digital ARC of The Last Act of Hattie Hoffman by Mindy Mejia for review. All opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own.

The Last Act of Hattie Hoffman carries that small-town vibe that creates an intimate read, with not many characters, this novel allows you to get up close and personal with the characters. As for the narrators, I really liked Del, the typical, small town sheriff who knows the victim and her family, and feels an added pressure to solve the case because of this fact.

I enjoyed the majority of this novel and throughout I couldn’t be sure who murdered Hattie, which is always what you want in a mystery novel. I had hoped the investigation itself would have a bigger role in the novel but that’s a personal preference – The Last Act of Hattie Hoffman is a character-driven novel, each narrator builds up a picture of the 'real' Hattie and explains the events that led to her death.

Towards the end of the novel, I began to lose interest and when the reveal came as to who killed Hattie, I wasn’t invested in who the guilty party was. Mainly because over the course of the story, I didn’t like the way Hattie was portrayed. Yes, she may have done wrong but at the end of the day she was still a young girl, and for the type of story this was I grew to dislike the manipulative picture that was portrayed of Hattie. The more this portrayal continued, the more I saw a girl who was maybe in need support and a closer look at why she did certain things.

At the beginning of this novel, I didn’t care much for Hattie but as the novel progressed, I ended up liking her, which is likely why I struggled with the portrayal of her character, especially towards the end of the novel. The Last Act of Hattie Hoffman does what it says, it explores themes of “manipulation of relationships and identity,” so I can’t be mad at that, it’s just the way things work out sometimes, that as twists are revealed and the plots progress, they don’t go the way you imagined. Many reviewers delight in the manipulative picture of Hattie but what can I say, I had a soft spot for her, to act wholly the way she did, I believe she has some inner issues going on rather than she’s just self-obsessed.

If you enjoy character-driven, small town mysteries, this may be the book for you.

I really enjoyed this book, the characters were all believable and I liked the way the story was told from several viewpoints. Will be looking out for more by this author. A great read, many thanks Netgalley 📚

The first thing what attracted me to this book was the cover, a lonely barn in lovely setting. Another thing was- small town. There is such a low possibility of a crime, that when it happens, it is a center of attention. It was the same thing in this book; no one expected it to happen, once it did, it became a main talk of a town, which brought out some very interesting and unexpected events and a very boring murderer.
As it was already mentioned in the description, this story is told from three different perspectives: Del’s, Hattie’s English teacher and Hattie. To be honest, the most interesting parts of this book were, when Hattie and her teacher told their story, I believe Del was just add on, because his investigation was not the best, and the whole story was opening up very nicely without Del. I think the characters lacked charisma and personality in this book, except for Hattie; she was well rounded and interesting. I really liked Hattie as a character because of her amazing talent of acting and manipulation, she knew what people wanted, and very nicely provided it to them.
The plot of this book didn’t really impress me. I did enjoy the story and the characters feelings, but I think it lacked some spice in it. The twists and turns were not very story changing and the whole investigation just flowed smoothly. I really liked, that Author opened quite difficult topic of teacher – student love, and why teachers fall for it. I think that aspect was interesting, and along with Hattie’s personality, these were the things which kept me going. There was not much action going on in this novel, but I did like the way Author was trying to side track the reader with different possible killers.
The writing style of this novel was easy to read, but the length of the chapters dragged along to me. (What can I say, I love short chapters) The ending of the book explained everything really nicely and I did like the conclusion and outcome of this book. So, even though it lacks some action, I still found some parts to enjoy, and if you like small town crime investigations, give it a try, you might like it.

This was an interesting murder mystery set in a small town in America - told from 3 different viewpoints... Hattie the 18 year old murder victim, Del the police officer in charge of the investigation and Peter a local man.

This was an easy read and the story was interesting enough to keep me hooked - however it lost a star simply because it felt like I had read it before with the same old small town stereotypes. Also I think like many I quickly realised who had done it!

The 3 main characters are well developed - Mejia is great at really giving the reader a sense of who these people are and their motivations.

I would definitely be interested in reading more from Mejia.

It’s no use getting too fond of Hattie Hoffman, because she is the victim in the book – there is a dual timeframe, so the story of the investigation (seen through the eyes of the sheriff) is interleaved with her own thoughts on life in the year leading up to her death, and the thoughts of another major character. All three are first person.

This is an unusual and very well-constructed book, and it catches you in unexpected corners. I don’t think anyone could predict its twists and turns, either as plot or at a deeper level in the ways the characters develop and change, and the ways our views of them change.

It is an extremely well-written book, with a level of imagination and an achieved voice that is rare in any literary work. I am, as regular readers know, not one to undervalue crime fiction compared with so-called literary fiction, but this was one book that I almost thought would work better as a novel. It’s apparent to us from early on that Hattie is a very nice person, and very well-liked, although she thinks of herself as ‘different’ from those around her (but then what teenager doesn’t?). She is sure her future must lie in New York City, far away from the small town in Minnesota where she lives, far away from the farmlands and barns and pickup trucks. She catches the eye of a High School football star, she pursues her ambitions to act, she works at the drugstore, and she goes online to research her future in New York – and to meet other potential literary, arty and theatre types.

So you can see there’s plenty of potential for things to go wrong. And they do.


The book features two of her amateur theatre productions – Jane Eyre (‘I’ll wear a grey dress with white cuffs’) and Macbeth – and it shows that she is acting all the time off-stage too: she is presenting herself to people as she thinks they want to see her. So which of her acts brought her to the barn where her life ended? How could such a thing happen to such a girl? Mindy Mejia has answers, and they may be ones that the reader disagrees with. The book is very nuanced, and makes you think hard about behaviour, and results, and responsibility. The US title of the book is Everything You Want Me to Be, and you can make a case for both UK and US choices.

It’s also a funny, warm, charming book (perhaps surprisingly), where you sympathize with all the characters to some extent. Unlike most literary teens, Hattie has a good relationship with her parents, and when her Dad talks about her dating, this is her response:
‘Did you get those convent brochures you’ve been waiting for?’ I yelled at his back and heard him chuckle.
I first heard about this book over at Bernadette’s Reactions to Reading, and her conclusion was that it’s ‘an unsettling, surprising, compelling and ultimately very satisfying read’. And I agree completely.

Bloody brilliant! Well paced and beautifully crafted!

Interesting characters and an intriguing mystery combine to create a great story with many twists and turns.

Hattie is a high school student from a small American town who is determined to make her name on the stage in New York. She is a gifted actress and uses her skills off- as well as on-stage, changing her personality depending on who she is with. When her body is found in an old barn, the local policeman, an old family friend, is called to investigate.

More than a police-procedural story of an investigation, this book is defined by it's strong characterisation and realistic dialogue. It's told from three points of view which helps to get the feeling you know the individuals and understand their side of the story.
You feel the grief of the parents, the distress of the school students, the frustration of the police, the nervousness of the suspects. More than one of Hattie’s contacts had a reason to murder her, or was it someone she didn’t know?

The writing is excellent and gives great insights into personalities. As a keen reader, I liked this description from Hattie on her mother: “Mom would be reading whatever the library just got in, since she’d gone through everything on their shelves. She never wanted to talk about her books though. Maybe that’s what made her so hard to read sometimes, all those books floating around in her.”

This book is also published under the alternative title ‘Everything you want me to be’ which perfectly describes the complicated Hattie.

This book had me hooked from the start. It was so cleverly written, telling the story from three different perspectives. It's certainly one of those books that kept you guessing about the suspects. I would thoroughly recommend it and am looking forward to reading some of Mindy Mejia's other books.

This was an interesting novel – it seemed innocent enough – young girl from a small town is murdered…but that’s not even the start of it. This novel has layer upon layer and it not only kicks up that midwestern American dust in the small town where the novel is set, but it blows it in your face and as you’re frantically wiping your eyes, it whips up yet another sand storm of intrigue.

The various viewpoints were well done and new information came to light as I read. The short chapter made this work well and believable as if you were at some gathering and flitting between the people in question. Stranger characters living in that town but what really captured me was the way it was all linked to the play Hattie was starring in – The Scottish Play – very apt and even if you just know the intrigue surrounding it, the powerful images this creates adds layers of intrigue upon layers of intrigue.

This is a character driven novel, a study of a small town community and it’s a memorable read. Remember that girl at school who you thought had it all, was the lead in the play….was it all a farce?

On another note, there were some lovely turns of phrase and coming of age ‘quotes’ sprinkled throughout but one, about books, made me smile: “Every book changes you in some way, whether it’s your perspective on the world or how you define yourself in relation to the world. Literature gives us identity, even terrible literature.”

Hattie Hoffman – your last act was quite something!

I wasn't sure exactly what to expect of this one - but wow, what a read! A fantastic storyline, lots of twists and turns and it kept going right up until the final page! Definitely my kind of book.
Hattie Hoffman is a bit of an enigma .. high school student, clever (too clever for her own good, many would say), sweet lovable daughter, good friend, popular with her peers and part time worker in a local store. But there is another part of Hattie not visible to the naked eye and that's what this novel is all about.
Wonderful characters, scarily real, this really was a little gem hidden away in my tbr list. If only I'd known how good it was, I'd have fast-tracked it long ago! A truly terrific read.

I received an arc via Net Galley in exchange for my honest and unbiased review.

Hattie Hoffman knows it’s good to have a plan. An aspiring actress, Hattie’s plan is to get the hell out of Pine Valley just as soon as she graduates high school. Hattie knows she’s better than a Pine Valley future. She knows she’s better than the girls who spend their whole lives hero worshipping beefy football players just to they can eventually marry those dumb jocks and settle into a lifetime of kids and Saturday nights spent watching mind-numbing Reality TV. Hattie is not like those girls. Hattie has her eyes on the prize and that prize is a future that entails a name-in-lights acting career in New York City. Hattie is determined to make it. This is a girl with her eyes so firmly set on the future that she’s already living her present like it’s her past. Too bad then for Hattie that life doesn’t always go to plan. Too bad for Hattie that her life ended just as it was about to begin.

Mindy Mejia’s ‘The Last Act of Hattie Hoffman,’ is a truly absorbing page-turner of small town murder, secrets and lies. The US title of this book is ‘Everything You Want Me to Be,’ and it’s a title that really fits the character of Hattie Hoffman to a tee. Complex and compelling, Hattie is a truly fascinating character who will keep you guessing as to her true self and motivations long after she’s taken her final breath. Like Laura Palmer to the town of Twin Peaks, Hattie Hoffman is Pine Valley’s golden girl with a winning smile and a dark secret to boot. A true actress, Hattie is determined to keep it all together, even when it looks like everything might fall apart. And so Hattie plays a part. She plays many parts. Hattie is a different someone to everyone she meets: brilliant student, perfect daughter, doting girlfriend, best friend – all the world’s a stage for Hattie, until the curtain falls.

So, who killed Hattie Hoffman? Who butchered her pretty face so badly that Hattie had to be identified by dental records? That’s a mystery for Del Goodman to solve. As the local sheriff of many years, Del isn’t easily shocked, but it’s safe to say that he’s rocked by Hattie’s brutal murder. After all, Pine Valley isn’t the type of place where murders happen too often, and certainly not to girls like Hattie Hoffman, who was found dead on the opening night of her school play where she wowed the audience as Lady Macbeth. One thing Del knows for sure is that Hattie’s murder was no random act of violence. The slash-marks on her face tell Del that Hattie’s murder was not only up close, it was also very personal.

I have a penchant for small-town tales where everyone has a story to tell and a secret hide, and The Last Act of Hattie Hoffman, with its slowly unfolding mystery told from multiple-viewpoints –including Hattie’s in the months before her death- was pretty much a perfect read for me. A girl who turned heads and touched lives, it soon becomes clear that nobody: not teachers or parents, not boyfriends or friends, escaped Hattie’s many faces or her lies. But which one of those lies got Hattie killed? I guarantee you’ll have fun finding out!

In the rural Minnesota community of Pine Valley life is simple but then tragedy strikes, local high school senior Hattie Hoffman is murdered and the town is shocked and out for vengeance. Sheriff Del discovers that Hattie was leading two separate lives, the wholesome, hard-working school girl with a football player for a boyfriend and the aspiring actress desperate to leave Pine Valley with her older lover. The secrets that Hattie has kept hold the clues to her murder, but who is telling the truth.

The story of Hattie's murder is told from three perspectives and in two separate narratives coming together to solve the problem. I really enjoyed this way of telling the story as it made complete sense. Hattie herself was a complex character who didn't deserve what happened to her but her motivations for her actions were naive at best. Peter was confused and torn between love and duty, city and country, and Del had suffered but remained loyal and professional. I did enjoy the twist at the end but it wasn't surprising!

Thank you to Netgalley for this copy for an honest review.

Hattie Hoffman is her towns golden girl. She good looking and popular, works hard at school and her job, she dates a guy from the football team. She harbours ambitions to go to New York to become an actress and everyone knows she's good enough. The thing is they have no idea just how good an actress she really is. On the opening night of her school play she is stabbed to death, leaving her town in shocked mourning. It's left to local sheriff Del Goodman to find her killer, and as he unravels her life he realise no one really knew her at all.

I read a quote just after finishing this book but it really made me think about this book. "Our character is what we do when we think no one is looking." It should be used for this book. In Hattie the author has created an extreme version of us all. We all have different personas around different groups of people. We need to. Goodness knows I couldn't be the potty mouthed sarcastic bint I am at work with my family! In Hattie though we have a girl who has embraced and mastered "all the world's a stage" approach to life. We hear the story from three view points. Hers and her English teacher Peter before the murder and Dels as he investigates. The author had succeeded in creating contrasting narratives so each segment has its own unique voice. What I think has been done really well is Hatties character in particular. Without getting to spoilerish it should be easy to dislike her but I can't help but root for her (pointless I know but I always hope for a different ending at the end of Titanic!). She is likeable but she makes bad decisions. She wants to please everyone and herself too. Pretty impossible.

This is a intriguing mystery, it doesn't try to be too clever but instead builds believable and sympathetic characters. An easy 5 stars.