Review: One Of Us Is Lying by Karen M. McManus – SO GOOD!

“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.”

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• Title: One Of Us Is Lying
• Author: Karen M. McManus
• Genre: Young Adult, Mystery, Contemporary
• Published: June 1st 2017 by Penguin
• Pages: 368

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*I received a free ARC from the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. This did not affect my opinion in any way.*

This has been one of my most anticipated releases this May and I was so happy when I got accepted to read it on Netgalley! I legit screamed out loud.

One Of Us Is Lying has been pitched as Breakfast Club meets Pretty Little Liars but since I haven’t seen The Breakfast Club, I can’t really say anything about that!

The book is about 5 teenagers who find themselves in detention after someone pulled a cell phone prank on them. Random cell phones that didn’t belong to them were found in their backpacks and nobody knew why. Simon, the guy who runs a popular gossip site at school, takes a drink from a cup of water and dies.

The story was sooo incredibly intriguing right from the start. The whole detention scene takes place in the first few pages/chapters (??? I don’t remember) and it immediately makes you curious and takes guesses who could have killed Simon. It definitely got me hooked. I also took a liking to the 4 main characters right from the start.

We experience the story from the perspectives of the 4 other students who were at detention with Simon aka the “suspects” of Simon’s murder. I’ve always said that I’m not that much of a fan of multiple POVs but this was carried out SO well!

The four characters are deliberately portrayed as your stereotypical high school students – the jock, the princess, the brain and the criminal. But they were still such likable characters and I found myself rooting for each of them to get out of the whole murder mess safely!

Although I did have one or two favorite characters 😉

I immediately took a liking to Nate. He’s the criminal in the group, having dealt drugs and being on probation because of it, so he’s the one that most people would blame first when the question of who murdered Simon arises.

Nate was so unapologetically himself and I totally admired that. I couldn’t NOT like him! And he was actually really funny and caring once you got to know him. God, I think I fell in love with him.

I was also a big fan of Bronwyn! She’s a super smart Latina and she fights for what is right. She was the persistent one in the group who kept trying to figure out what could have happened, who could have been involved in the murder etc. She tried so much to get everyone out of this mess! She was just AWESOME! Definitely my favourite character in this book!

Throughout the story, there were a lot of twists and turns, new secrets and truths being revealed and unravelled and it made the whole thing very exciting! I never really knew who to suspect but I do have to say I had one or two suspicions (which also happened to be right lol) but that totally didn’t make this any less exciting!

There’s also a romance that is developing (it is not the main focus though) WHICH I LOVED. Like I am literally obsessed. It didn’t feel like insta-love at all because it was all done so realistically and I just loved it. LOVED. MY NEW OTP. ❤

I’m very impressed by this debut novel (LIKE HOW IS THIS A DEBUT??? IT’S SO GOOD!!!) and I definitely want to read more of McManus’ work!

You’ve probably heard SO much about this book already but IT’S AWESOME and it totally deserves all the hype! I hope I could get you to consider adding it to your TBR/purchasing it/recommending it to a friend, if you haven’t already done all of these things 😉 It’s so worth it!

 (5 OUT OF 5 STARS)

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ONE OF US IS LYING IS OUT NOW!!! GO PURCHASE IT ON:

Amazon US / Amazon UK / Barnes & Noble

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Have you read One Of Us Is Lying yet? Did you like it? Do you plan on purchasing this? Have you read other mystery stories like this? Let’s chat in the comments!