The Hundred Lies of Lizzie Lovett- Chelsea Sedoti

This was the Big Library Read for October 12-26.  The Big Library Read is a initiative where they work with libraries using Overdrive to make a book available (via ebook or audiobook) to everyone who wants to read it without any holds or waitlisting.  The DC Public Library was featuring it pretty heavily on their site, so I picked it up.

My firs thought regarding this book is that it's terribly misnamed.  Lizzie Lovett doesn't tell any lies in this book.  In fact, she only has about three lines of dialogue at all.  I'm guessing that her "lies" were that she acted different ways in different situations and sometimes appeared to be contrary, but guess what?  People are allowed to be contrary and to act differently in different situations!  They're allowed to change over time!  Figuring that out takes the main character a ridiculous amount of time, which was a bit sad.

So, the story here is about narrator Hawthorn, a seventeen-year-old girl who is a bit of an outcast at her high school, and whose world is turned upside down by the disappearance of the titular Lizzie Lovett, who Hawthorn adored upon meeting and then later despised for most of the one year they were at the same school--Lizzie as a senior and Hawthorn as a freshman.  Now Hawthorn is a senior, and she only has one friend.  The book description says that Hawthorn inserts herself into a missing persons case, but that's not entirely accurate either, because she never gets involved with the investigation itself--just with Lizzie's boyfriend, rambling around in the woods looking for Lizzie, who Hawthorn actually believes is a werewolf.  Now you might get some idea as to why Hawthorn doesn't have many friends and is considered weird.

This had a lot of potential, but ultimately it lacked depth and nuance and character growth.  Hawthorn does get some leeway for her hard-headedness and self-absorption, because she is a teenager, and that's what teenagers are.  But in some ways, she acts much younger; her dream is to go out on an adventure and discover that werewolves are real and be able to tell everyone, "I told you so," which seemed like something more suited to a middle- or elementary school student than a high school student who, while still being able to enjoy fantasy, make up stories, etc., should still have a better sense of fiction and reality.  She wants to make her point so much that she involves herself with Lizzie's boyfriend, who might have killed Lizzie.  What?  How is this mental stability?  Yes, innocent until proven guilty--but still, exercise a little caution, Hawthorn!  Her instability (yes, I'm calling it instability) is depicted as something cute and quirky and even romantic, but I just couldn't find it to be so because of the utterly stupid things it drove her to do.

Hawthorn's main "nemesis" in this book is Mychelle, a stereotypical popular bitchy girl who bullies Hawthorn.  There's never anything that's gone into with her own motivations, insecurities, etc.  Hawthorn's family, her best friend, and all the other supporting characters, including Lizzie's boyfriend who Hawthorn becomes involved with over the course of her "investigation," are all equally flat and undeveloped.  The one person I thought showed promise was Connor, but ultimately he never got enough page time to develop into the true, warm character I thought he could become.

One thing that I do think this book really had going for it: the setting.  The story takes place in the fictional (I believe) town of Griffin Mills, Ohio, which is a slowly-dying steel town.  I could perfectly picture the atmosphere in the town, which Sedoti captures in a one-page essay that Hawthorn turns in after forgetting to do the real assignment.  It was the perfect atmosphere for a story like this, and I could see why Hawthorn used fantasy to escape her mundane life--but I was still concerned for how deeply she seemed to believe the things she made up.

This was a quick read, and it was mildly entertaining, but Hawthorn's delusions left me side-eyeing her.  She showed a bit of growth by the end, but I'm still concerned for her mental status, and the rest of the book left something to be desired.

2.5 stars out of 5.