Review: One of Us Is Lying by Karen M. McManus

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.

Shona's review 5 of 5 stars

One of my earliest thoughts when starting this was it was a little Breakfast Club-esque with regards to the main characters, and I know another reviewer has referred to it as a cross between The Breakfast Club and Pretty Little Liars, and I'd have to agree, although this has an extra edge. Here we have a group of kids who were in the room when another died, and it seems like everyone is looking to pin the blame on them without asking who else would be likely to kill Simon, so they have to resort to figuring it out themselves.

I devoured this book in one sitting. Unable to put this down until I knew how things were going to develop, I needed to know who was responsible for killing Simon, who was leaving the messages on his app after his death and I needed to know everyones secrets. The fact that McManus has done an incredible job writing this book made it so much easier to keep reading. This is an amazing debut book and I will be looking out for future works from McManus.