One of Us Is Lying: TikTok made me buy it: 1

Set in high school with a heavily clichéd outline of a plot and much of the answer can be guessed early on. But... I loved the characters and cared about the outcome, and Karen has something to say about life on the Internet too. Also the character arc where she comes out of a toxic relationship is a lovely, refreshing read. I loved it, I think it lives up to the hype.

Contemporary YA is not usual my cup of tea - give me fantasy or sci-fi or paranormal any day. But the premise of this intrigued me enough to give it a go, and I wasn't disappointed. Five students are given detention, having possibly been set up by having banned mobile phones places in their bags. One maintains a popular website spreading accurate but vicious gossip about his fellow students. The other four all have something to hide, and are about to be featured on his blog. The first student is poisoned and dies, leading police to assume one of the remaining four must have killed him - after all, they had access and the had a motive. The overall vibe is thus somewhere between an 80s highschool movie and an Agatha Christie movie - think Murder on the Breakfast Club Express. Though the mystery is interesting - and the conclusion interesting, if a little predictable - it's the characters that really drive the story. All four of them are self-referentially introduced as high school stereotypes: a geek, a jock, a bad boy and a popular girl. But as the book progresses, the nuances beneath those labels become clear. It's hard not to like and root for all four of them, and their interactions with and growing friendship with each other is great. The writing is really good and on the whole, the voices are well-differentiated. The book runs through quite a lot of issues such as bullying, coming out, drugs etc, but doesn't feel preachy or like the story is being manipulated to promote a message. Overall, this was a really enjoyable read, nice and light and fun, but with a little stream of darkness running through to give it a bit more edge and interest.

It was really good and it has a lot of suspense, I definitely recommend it It is good for people that like to put puzzle pieces together It is five star so good LOVE IT

I feel like I have been waiting FOREVER for this book and when I finally got my hands on it it turned out to be everything I had hoped! I'm not one for murder mysteries, but this book was just so addictive that I couldn't help but read it within a day whilst my mind spent the entire time trying to think up the answer to who did it! I literally thought of every single answer of who it could be and although at on point I did chose the right answer, it was still a great surprise when all was revealed. "Bronwyn Rojas, I solemnly swear not to murder you today or at any point in the future. Deal?" "You're ridiculous," she mutters, going even redder. "It concerns me you're avoiding a promise not to murder me." At some point or other when reading this book I disliked each of our four main characters. Bronwyn got too up herself, Addy was too dumb, Nate kept making stupid life choices and Cooper was up his own backside! I kept changing my mind on who I wanted the guilty party to be depending on who I disliked at that moment. But then as we got further through the book, and as more of each character was revealed I found myself liking each of them more and more and suddenly I didn't want it to be any of them. "I guess we're almost friends now, or as friendly as you can get when you're not one hundred percent sure the other person isn't framing you for murder." The story is told from the four POVs of our main suspects and really it was the only way it could have been done. The plot progressed at a decent rate, some parts a little slow but as a whole I never felt like the story was dragging. I really liked the mix of normal teenage angst (young love, family problems, popularity etc) mixed in with the tension that comes with being a murder suspect and McManus pulled it off perfectly! "We could be surrounded by walking dead in the zombie apocalypse and she’d look for the bright side."

Loved this so much. Very cleverer

I have mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand it gripped me from the beginning and wouldn't let go until I read all the way to the end and found out who actually killed Simon. Once I figured that out, there were more questions, like how the police only focused their investigation on the four suspects in the room. It was fairly obvious that there were plenty more people who wanted Simon dead. It was the Bronwyn and Addy (two of the suspects) who unravelled the biggest clues. The police didn't even consider anyone else, which I thought was a bit pathetic. I was worried when I realised there were four point of view characters. I don't normally like multiple point of views as I find them distracting, but in this book they worked. Not only did we have the mystery of who killed Simon, we had the mystery surrounding each character and their supposed motive. While three of the four were obvious, Cooper's motive was something I didn't see coming, and I loved it. My one problem with the different point of views were that the characters voices all sounded the same. There was no way of telling who was 'speaking' without reading the name at the beginning of their chapter. Since all the characters were different with different experiences and different driving forces, I found this odd. One small tidbit that threw me was when Bronwyn (who was supposed to be the smartest girl in school) said she hadn't spoken to another character in 'light years'. For someone that smart, I would have expected her to know that light years is a measure of distance and not time. She was saying this to her sister (who she described as smarter than her) and the sister didn't pick up on this either. There was no irony in the statement, or anything to suggest they were poking fun at the term since a lot of people do get this confused. I know most people wouldn't be bothered by this, but I was, and it really destroyed Bronwyn's character. Being smart was who she was, and she showed she wasn't smart. I do think this was an interesting read, but if you're looking for crime fiction, I would stick to David Baldacci and James Patterson. This was more high school drama with a bit of mystery thrown in.

Engaging and thrilling, but a bit predictable One of Us Is Lying definitely lives up to the hype! The plot is fast-paced and filled with suspense, keeping you hooked from start to finish. The characters are well-developed, and the twisty mystery about who killed Simon kept me guessing (mostly). It’s a great read if you’re into high school drama mixed with crime and secrets. However, I did find some parts a little predictable, especially toward the end. While it’s entertaining, some plot twists felt like they could’ve been a bit more surprising. Overall, it’s an enjoyable, easy read that I’m glad I picked up after seeing it on TikTok. Highly recommend if you like thrillers with teen drama!

High school might not hold fond memories for the majority of us, detention even less so, but reading this debut YA thriller from the comfort of an armchair is a wholly pleasurable experience! As an onlooker with access all areas to a cast of adolescent narrators, One of Us Is Lying is an experience to relish and fiendishly addictive! When a diverse group of students at Bayview High all show up for Mr Avery’s detention after getting caught with their mobile phones in their bags during class they are convinced they have been set up. On a superficial level the individuals who walk into detention are a teen movie just awaiting a script; Yale-bound perennial overachiever, Bronwyn Rojas; notorious supplier and slacker Nate Macauley; airhead homecoming princess Adelaide (“Addy”) Prentiss; all American heartthrob and baseball star, Cooper Clay and social pariah and man with a smoking gun, aka creator of “About That”, Simon Kelleher. Given that these students do not ordinarily move in the same social circles, converse or even trust each other, most definitely not Simon, a twitchy atmosphere prevails when Mr Avery has to leave the room. “If all you knew of Bayview High was Simon Kelleher’s gossip app, you’d wonder how anyone found time to go to class.” Things take an unexpected turn for the worse when Simon takes a sip of water, collapses and dies and the Bayview Police enter the fray and discover that his drink was laced with peanut oil. With no EpiPens on hand and Simon’s allergy widely known, it isn’t long being the rumour mill gathers apace and given that the Internet gossip application created by Simon, ‘About That’, has ruined plenty of lives already in some pretty serious ways, the list of students who have reason to want to orchestrate his demise is abundant. In fact, asking which students do not have an axe to grind with Simon would probably be more useful, but given only four other people along with Mr Avery were in the room, the discovery that Simon had queued a blog post due to go live the very next day revealing some juicy gossip about each of those students in the room puts Bronwyn, Nate, Addy and Cooper squarely in the frame. And with the revelations most definitely not trifling and having the potential to change the course of the future for all involved, all four have possible cause to plot Simon’s murder. As readers get to hear from all the students under suspicion, tentative alliances begin to form but as further revelations and a series of Tumblr posts follow the foursome under suspicion decide they must work together as a team to ensure their freedom and restore their besmirched reputations. As Bronwyn’s sister, Grace, digs into Simon’s online persona and his posts to some very twisted internet community forums they start to see a different side to the student they all thought they knew. Karen McManus proves that writing a YA novel with well-realised characters is most definitely not an oxymoron, and excels by not adhering to the stereotypes and cliched tropes of the genre. In fact she goes much further and actively turns them on their heads. It is this excellent characterisation which leaves the reader second guessing each and every one of the ‘suspects’ who make it out of detention alive, because nothing these students do is predictable and they do not subscribe to the proscribed norms. Hard to believe, but even Simon who we learn much more of after his demise and the supporting cast of relatives, best friends and associated rubberneckers and gossipmongers all feel like real individuals. By switching the narrative, McManus keeps her readers in the dark, chasing their tail in a bid to identify just who is lying and who is scrambling from the fear of their past catching up with them. A more ambiguous bunch you could not want to meet and however much contempt the reader summons for Simon’s cretinous trolling, it is hard not to conclude that he played to his strengths and whilst not entirely being a “public service” as Simon attests, there is an obvious element of entrepreneurship at work with the creation of his gossip app. Although I did work out where the novel was heading before it was made clear by the author, I am not ashamed to admit that I spent two-thirds of this novel playing detective and it took me far longer to get a handle on matters than with some adult thrillers! However the real joy of this novel is not how realistic and convincing McManus is able to make this story feel, it is the growth and evolution of the lead characters who all discover more about themselves and escape the confines of their designated niche in society. It sounds supremely naff to say that all four become better people during the course of their month under the microscope, but they do all discover more about themselves as people and without feeling overly twee due to a few stumbling blocks along the way it feels truly authentic. What contributes to making this such a fantastically compelling read is that the tone never even verges on becoming too preachy and the obvious lessons are not writ too large. In contrast to the majority of YA novels which unfold from the perspective of a loner or school misfit navigating the tricky waters of high school, One of Us Is Lying showcases a diverse cross section and some wonderfully individual perspectives. Review written by Rachel Hall (@hallrachel)