The worst book to be published in January 2017 most likely.

I couldn't take this story seriously at all. I even wished there were some real supernatural elements because the main character's assumptions annoyed me so much. Couldn't read past page 100.

Plain and simple: this book wasn’t what I thought it would be.

After reading the blurb, I assumed this would be a YA novel based on a missing person investigation. Instead, it was mainly about the main character, Hawthorn was using her imagination and creating different scenarios in her head.

Although there were times where Hawthorn annoyed me a bit, I truly enjoyed her character development. As the normal teenage/high school process, we are all conflicted on who we want to be and tend to always assume the grass in greener on the other side. As Hawthorn develops, she realizes that the grass may appear greener, but that is not always the case.

I received this as an ARC through Netgalley and I thank the publisher for the opportunity to read it!

I didn't enjoy reading this very much. It felt forced and wasn't a fun read.

I wish I could have gotten into this book. I tried - multiple times, actually. I was never fully able to get involved in this and that was terribly disappointing.

This book was just an okay read for me. I didn't love it. I didn't hate it. It was just whatever.

I loved delving into the mind of Hawthorn as she tries to figure out the mysterious death of a popular and beloved young woman. Teen angst, conspiracy theories, and themes of belonging and identity are weaved beautifully in a captivating story with hints of horror and other worldly beings. The characters are believable and relatable to high school readers. I highly recommend this book to YA readers who like a bit of creepiness with their coming of age stories about figuring out how you fit into the world.

Have you ever wanted to scream at a character? Well that is how I felt about Hawthorn Creely. I liked her, but OMG! I wanted to scream to Hawthorn to pay attention to people around her. No specifics, I don't want to give away the story, but if you read the book you would understand. Also, what is with the obsession with wolves? I understand that she doesn't want to accept bad things in life, but the wolves throughout the whole story became a bit much. Now the story itself was good. A girl goes missing and of course the boyfriend is suspected, but taking over said girls life? I feel like I would have loved every aspect of this story if it had a different main character. She can be very clueless at times. I was interested throughout the whole story though. I would still recommend the book to people.

Hawthorne is hoping to skip a day of school and think she might've found a reason when she hears that her brother's ex-girlfriend, Lizzie Lovett, has gone missing. Hawthorne never really liked Lizzie who is everything Hawthorne is not - popular, pretty, and happy. But now she becomes obsessed with Lizzie and her current boyfriend, Enzo. Soon Hawthorne is working at Lizzie's old job and consulting with Enzo about her theory that Lizzie might have turned into a werewolf.

Boy, this is an odd book with an unlikable protagonist. I get it that Hawthorne is struggling in her own life so it makes sense that she would be pretty weird as a narrator, but that didn't make her any more fun to read as she engaged in self-destructive behavior. I was waiting for something big to happen but there really wasn't any big twist. That's more like real life, I know, but it made the story flat for me.

Man, that's a weird book. You seriously have to be in a very specific mood to read this. Luckily, I think I was in the right mood for most of this story. It's not a traditional "mystery" about someone going missing. Hawthorn is an incredibly bizarre character who, like the synopsis suggests, starts to "become" Lizzie (the missing person) in a lot of ways. This includes getting her job and talking to her boyfriend. However, I read the synopsis as being some kind of creepy impostor situation where people believe she IS Lizzie. Hawthorn really just has some insane theories about what actually happened to Lizzie and tries to get as much information as possible. Again, this sounds like a mystery but it's really not about that.

Hawthorn was a bizarre, imperfect, and often annoying main character. She definitely had a lot of flaws and obsessive traits, but I have to admit that I was fascinated by her journey. The side characters were really interesting too. She had a complex friendship with Emily, her best friend, on top of equally complicated relationships with her family members. Her brother was a popular kid in high school that played football, her dad is a history professor, and her mom is an (ex-)hippie. There's a caravan of people that come to stay in their yard. It was a very weird situation, to be honest. I think this book is really about finding your place and realizing you're not the only person who feels weird, alone, or judged all of the time. Hawthorn really goes on a journey to find herself... by becoming obsessed with someone else. 

Overall, I'm not totally sure who to recommend this book to? Its clear from other reviews that people didn't love it because it was too weird or whimsical. You absolutely need to go into it with an open mind or else you're likely going to hate it. Because of those other reviews, I tried to eliminate all of my expectations. If you start this book with no expectations when you’re in a quirky mood, maybe try it.

I did get an arc from Netgalley to review but due to many innumerable reasons, it took me a year to get around to reading this.

Although I cannot say I missed much.

Hawthorn Creely, the main protagonist, is insufferable. She is self absorbed and vain and mean to everyone around here. The author tried to justify her behavior by trying make her look like a free spirit with wild imagination but her character did not settle much with me.

Her obsession (I have no other words) is unsettling. Hawthorn, herself, has no idea how she actually feels about Lizzie Lovett which irked me a lot. The disjoint tones in the story made it a lot more annoying to read. The dry humor and cynic in Hawthorn just made me roll my eyes all throughout the book.

To be honest, I pretty much liked every other character than Hawthorn. I liked her parents, her brother and even the hippies from her mom’s past. I actually liked Conner, Rush’s best friend, a lot and wanted a lot more of him in the book. Emily, the best friend, was also a character I enjoyed. She was smart and talented and kind.

I really wanted to enjoy the book but I was so disappointed. But nonetheless, thank you Sourcebooks Publishing for sending me a copy and I apologize sincerely for getting to review it this late.

This book was definitely unique, I was thinking it would center more on the scariness of the disappearance, but was happy it focused more on the other’s reactions to the disappearance. I was pleasantly surprised by this book. I thought it was a lot funnier than I anticipated and questioned myself for laughing at some points.
I thought Hawthorn was a great narrator. She had a hilarious sense of humor, and a was quite blunt. Hawthorne told the story as almost a reporter, which I really liked. I thought the side characters were a great contrast to Hawthorn. She reminded me of the girl who cried wolf, coming up with odd theories and such, which added to the story.
If you are looking for a funny take on a serious situation this is definitely the book for you. It had it’s serious moments, but more so was comical, to me anyway. I thought the story came full circle in a way I personally wasn’t expecting, but thought made the book what it was, highly enjoyable.

I am sorry for the inconvenience but I don’t have the time to read this anymore and have lost interest in the concept. I believe that it would benefit your book more if I did not skim your book and write a rushed review. Again, I am sorry for the inconvenience.

The topic and author no longer interest me, and I will not be finishing the book.

This book was not at all what I expected, and at first I wasn't okay with that, but as it went on and things began to further play themselves out, I began to prefer the story the way it was written rather than the way I'd imagined. I guess the middle of the story took me by such a surprise I didn't have much hope, but I'm glad I stuck it out.

Just couldn't get into this story. The premise sound great, but in the first few pages I just couldn't connect with the main character.

"The Hundred Lies of Lizzie Lovett" is so much more than just a mystery. Chelsea has done a fabulous job of giving real depth and voice to a teenage who does not fit in. This book tore at my heartstrings and will remember it for a long time to come. Although it is a YA book, I think adults should be reading it.

Wow, so, like, this is like a totally annoying way to write, right? So, like, you probably wouldn’t have the main character of a book, like, totally talk like this, right? Well, not if you’re Chelsea Sedoti.

In fairness, this weird Valley Girl vernacular drops off pretty quickly, but after reading the first few pages of The Hundred Lies of Lizzie Loveitt I really wasn’t sure if I could keep going. I did, and it did get better, but unfortunately there was plenty of other things to get annoyed about.

The book itself is about a girl called Hawthorne, who gets completely hung up on the disappearance of Lizzie Loveitt, a girl she vaguely knows from school. I didn’t understand exactly why Hawthorne got so involved in the case (we’re told she has an active imagination – more on that later – and Lizzie does sound like a very engaging individual) but I don’t get why she got so wrapped up in events. Was it a girl crush? Was it just the excitement of the disappearance? I’m still not sure.

Through Hawthorne’s own investigations, she meets Lizzie’s boyfriend and begins a kind of relationship with him. That might sound all sweet and adorkable but frankly, it was just a bit odd. Normally I’m firmly in the corner of the weirdo’s but as a character, Hawthorne was just too random, even for me. She had the most bizzare ideas about what had happened to Lizzie and seemed to want to convince herself and everyone around her that she had figured things out, even when her solutions were ridiculous and she knew that everyone would laugh at her. I found Hawthorne to be so lacking in rationality that it was impossible to follow her train of thought, which got on my nerves.

Lots of the other characters in the book weren’t really fleshed out properly so it was hard for me to engage with them. Lizzie’s boyfriend, Enzo, was a stereotypical tortured artist type, Hawthorne’s best friend was a stereotypical nerd, her mum was a stereotypical hippie. They all had side stories that didn’t really go anywhere and their relationships with Hawthorne seemed quite flimsy. A chunk of the story was dedicated to some gypsies turning up and camping on Hawthorne’s lawn, but nothing really happened except a couple of conversations where Lizzie was given advice.

Yawn.

As the title of the book suggests, I thought that Hawthorne and Enzo would uncover some exciting/horrifying/salacious information about Lizzie that would add intrigue to the storyline –but – SPOILER ALERT – instead they just discovered that Lizzie had changed a lot since high school and lived a very minimal life. Quite a lot was made of this (Lizzie was empty inside, always changing herself to fit in with others etc.) but really, who hasn’t changed from their high school self? And so what if she had a minimal apartment? I felt a bit cheated by this.

The ending of the book was pretty anti-climatic and after that I thought that the story dragged. Luckily, it ended pretty soon after.

All in all, I didn’t totally hate the book but I couldn’t really engage with the characters or the storyline. The only thing that kept me reading was the certainty that at some point, something would happen…but it kind of didn’t. Perhaps if you’re more of a fan of YA you might get more from the storyline or relate to the characters better, but it just wasn’t for me.

Hawthorn comes up with a theory about what happens to a girl who has gone missing, a girl who happens to be one of the most popular girls from High School, Lizzie Lovett. Hawthorn has always been a bit of a social misfit, and she feels ostracized from everyone at school. She’s constantly concerned about others making fun of her, and she feels like she can confide in no one except her best friend. So she comes up with this wild theory about what happens to Lizzie Lovett and decides to find out what happened herself.

I’m not allowed to tell you about the theory because the author seems to have intentionally left the theory out of the blurb about the book. However, let me just say, the reveal was less exciting than I was hoping it would be. Try not to get your hopes up too much. Keep in mind, this book is more about Hawthorn than it is about the events that transpire.

The quest to uncover the truth behind her theory draws Hawthorn out of her shell a bit more. There’s a lot of truth to be said about creating a box for yourself when you have social anxiety, and Hawthorn doesn’t even realize she’s done it. She spends so much time running away from the possibility of having a negative interaction that she avoids ends up avoiding all interactions, including the good ones. However, once Hawthorn starts tracking her theory, taking over Lizzie’s job and getting cozy with Lizzie’s boyfriend, she begins to see a different set of possibilities. Sedotti has a great handle on coaxing Hawthorn out of her shell with some sudden wake up calls from loved ones.

The beginning of this book dragged on and was painful to read. For a long time, I didn’t think Hawthorn would have any character development, as she seemed mired down in her ways. Hawthorn is quirky and weird, and I didn’t often find myself relating to her, despite my own social anxiety. The story isn’t what I expected either, more caught up in Hawthorn’s narrative than in the actual unfurling of events. The final reveal was sudden and disappointing, much as it probably would be in real life. Although this story was much more realistic, I think I was hoping for a little more drama and fiction.

Hawthorn did have a huge character development arc, but I was still left wanting more to the story. I didn’t enjoy any of the characters, and the story itself wasn’t particularly interesting. Which is a shame, as I was really excited for this book. Ah, well, mixed reviews abound, so decide for yourself!

I received a copy of this book from Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.

Hawthorn lives her young life in her own world. She loves to dream and fantasize. This story took a different track then I intially thought - but it was good none the less.