Book Review: Kim’s Thoughts on One of Us is Lying by Karen M. McManus

One of Us is Lying
Series: Book one of One of Us is Lying series

Author: Karen M. McManus
Published: May 30, 2017
360 Pages

Reviewed By: Kim
Kim’s Rating: 4 stars

Book Description:

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.

**Kim has FINALLY read One of Us is Lying!  Jessica has previously read it and loved it.  In fact she gave it 5 stars. Jessica’s review is here.

Kim’s Review:

Jessica has been after me for months to read this book. She was definitely right! My neighborhood book club picked this book so I finally sat down to read it. Thankfully it was much better than 13 Reasons Why. It seemed to accomplish what 13 Reasons was trying to do, but failed because we were all too pissed off with what’s-her-booty who left the tapes. The mystery was looping and kept me guessing. My gut was wrong once again, but I enjoyed trying to work everything out. Apparently finally watching Saw didn’t help my behavioral analysis at all.

I liked all the characters and enjoyed watching them grow and learn. Everything was going really well, until the mystery was solved . . . and guess what. Teenagers are stupid. And that’s literally what the entire driving force of the book was. Teenagers are stupid and they do stupid things and then they have to deal with the stupid things that they do and they respond with more stupid things. The end was so anti-climactic and it dropped my rating to 4 stars.

I don’t want to give anything else away but I do recommend this book, but far more for the reading and the journey and less for the resolution. Great story, great characters, great mystery, sucky ending. But I still want to continue with the series, so that should tell you something too!

Purchase Links:
Amazon US
Amazon UK