The Hundred Lies of Lizzie Lovett

by Chelsea Sedoti

[empressbrooke]

I always enjoy a YA book with a main character who is more of a typical, flawed teen. It's a nice balance to the more fantastical YA novels where the teenagers are mature and worldly and have robust stress tolerance and problem solving skills. Hawthorne Creely is none of that. She is miserable and bored because she has no idea who she is or what she wants, and she assumes that all of her peers have their lives all figured out. She is deeply self-centered and hopelessly misunderstands other people. She's terrified of college being as big of a let down as high school, so she's avoiding all responsibility by retreating into her imagination: a local girl goes missing, and Hawthorne is convinced she turned into a werewolf. She's really obnoxious and I found myself getting frustrated with her (as most of the other characters do, too), but the author does a really skilled job of slowly nudging Hawthorne toward maturity and empathy through the second half of the book. I really love the YA heroines who are skilled assassins and long lost princesses who can lead armies and save the world, but sometimes it's nice to read about teenage feelings that are all too real.