One of Us is Lying
The Breakfast Club meets Pretty Little Liars, One of Us Is Lying is the story of what happens when five strangers walk into detention and only four walk out alive. Everyone is a suspect, and everyone has something to hide. Pay close attention and you might solve this. On Monday afternoon, five students at Bayview High walk 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 wasn’t 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.
Karen McManus is on my crap list right now. Not because her book, One of Us is Lying, was bad but because I had a ton of things I needed to get done today and had only planned to read for a couple of hours at the most. But NOOOOOOOO! She had to go and write a book so compelling, so intriguing, so damn addictive there was no way I could put it down until I found out who killed Simon.
The book is described as the Breakfast Club meets Pretty Little Liars and there really is no better description. I got into PLL through the TV Show then discovered it was based on a book series and couldn’t wait to find out who ‘A’ was so I read the whole series. Only later did I find out the books and TV show weren’t the same but the essence of someone being behind the scenes and pulling the strings of a group of people like they are toy puppets remained the same which is part of what make McManus’ book so good. She just did it with a more diverse group of characters so you get a wider variety of issues that have to be dealt with adding to the intrigue.
Her plot line moves fast. Where it took Sara Shepard 16 books to flesh out her whole story, McManus did roughly the same in just this one. Thank god for that because between PLL’s TV show and 16 books, I’m not sure I have the attention span for a lengthy drawn out who the hell is the Big Bad behind the scenes arc again. It also goes to McManus’ credit that she can fully develop characters, including their back story, in such a similar fashion in just the one book. This story was incredibly detailed, thought out and planned perfectly from page one. I didn’t see the full arch of where she was going until it was revealed and almost dropped the book in shock. It was right up there with the big reveal in PLL – not the first A, but UBER A. It’s just that shocking. Once you know it makes perfect sense. There is just so much more I want to say about that but there is NO WAY I’m spoiling it because you deserve to find out like I did.
I have to give McManus a lot of credit because even though it IS very comparable to Breakfast Club and PLL she has her own stamp all over this, she took a theme that has been done before and made it hers to the point you walk away feeling like this is just going to be stuck in your head for a while.
Note to McManus – next time you write something like this give people a heads up they should clear their calendar because now I have a ton of stuff to do tomorrow to make up for not being able to put your book down!
Thank you to Netgalley and Delacorte Press for allowing me to review this book.
*synopsis and pic from amazon.com