One of Us is Lying

Title: One of us is lying

Author: Karen M. McManus

Published: 1st June 2017

Genre: Young Adult, Mystery

Number of pages: 368 (Paperback)

567 (Hardcover)

Start Date: 17th January 2022

Finish Date: 17th January 2022

Summary

Pay close attention and you might solve this. On Monday afternoon, five students at Bayview High walked into detention. Bronwyn, the brain, is Yale-bound and never breaks a rule. Addy, the beauty, is the picture-perfect homecoming princess. Nate, the criminal, is already on probation for dealing. Cooper, the athlete, is the all-star baseball pitcher. And Simon, the outcast, is the creator of Bayview High's notorious gossip app.Only, Simon never makes it out of that classroom. Before the end of detention Simon's dead.

And according to investigators, his death was not an accident. On Monday, he died. But on Tuesday, he d planned to post juicy reveals about all four of his high-profile classmates, which makes all four of them suspects in his murder. Or are they the perfect patsies for a killer who's still on the loose?

Everyone has secrets, right? What really matters is how far you would go to protect them.

Review

In this book we meet five students who have all ended up in detention together except not all five make it out; outsider and owner of a notorious gossip app Simon Kelleher ends up dead. Soon it is established that Simon has been murdered, so the four other students fight for their innocent. But this does not come easily as secrets start being spilled.

Other mystery books I have found the clues out easily and worked out who it was by myself but with this one I was completely shocked who it was. At first I thought it was going to be a book full of stereotypical teenagers that give contemporary YA novels a bad rep but the author used this to her advantage.

She printed it on the blurb of the book in the description! The ending of the book also wasn't typical for a YA novel, there was no gag worthy happily ever after where everyone is paired up in couples and ride off into the sunset, there were some upbeats moments but the ending is messy and real which felt really refreshing to me.

People made mistakes beyond the central narrative and there were consequences and some things were left open-ended in the way that makes you wonder what their eventual decisions lead to. There were times that I felt the pacing of the story was slow and it was hard to read but I definitely did not expect the twist at the end.

Highly recommended to teens,, but I think adults are going to enjoy this one as well. There’s something really special and unique to this story that defies the boundaries of age gaps and will have me remembering it for months to come. I am looking forward to reading the next book and exploring her writing more.

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️