Book Review: One of Us is Lying by Karen M. McManus

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BOOK review
Started on: 2 November 2017
Finished on: 14 November 2017

One of Us is Lying by Karen M. McManus

Title : One of Us is Lying
Author : Karen M. McManus
Publisher : Delacorte Press
Pages : 358 pages / 361 pages (e-book)
Year of Publication : 2017
Price : Rp 174,052 (https://www.bookdepository.com/)

Rating: 5/5
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"I can't stop doing the math in my head. It's eight-fifty a.m. on Tuesday, and twenty-four hours ago Simon was going to homeroom for the last time. Six hours and five minutes from then we were heading to detention. An hour later, he died."

One afternoon, five students went into detention—Bronwyn Rojas, is the smart girl who never breaks a rule; Addy Prentiss, typical beauty who dates the popular guy at school; Cooper Clay, an aspiring baseball pitcher; Nate Macauley, the bad boy who's on probation for drug dealing; and Simon Kelleher, the outcast and the inventor behind Bayview High's gossip app. Simon's gossip app has always been controversial for exposing facts about Bayview High's students. Those news has ruined the lives of several students, some even led to suicide. That day during detention, they all feel accused for something they did not do. Little did they know, that day Simon never made it out of the classroom alive. He died from a sudden allergic reaction—and the other four students are there to witness the horror.

"That's the kind of person you can get away with killing: someone everybody else wants dead."

After thorough investigation, it was concluded that Simon's death was not accidental—which means someone intentionally triggered Simon's allergic reaction. Soon, they also found out that Simon had planned to reveal secrets hidden by the other four students who got into detention with him. Since then, Bronwyn, Cooper, Addy, and Nate has become the main suspects in Simon's murder. While none of them admits anything, each of them are trying hard to protect their own secrets until the truth is revealed.

"None of them have as much experience as I do keeping a straight face when shit's falling apart around them. At least, none of them are as good at it as me."

image source: here. edited by me.

"Unless one of us is lying. Which is always a possibility." 

To be honest, I picked up this book at random when I was contemplating what to read next. The cover is the first thing that grabbed my attention; and it's also been talked about by a lot of BookTubers—although I didn't looked at reviews because I'm avoiding spoilers. I went into it not knowing what to expect, and I think that was the best way to jump into this story. The plot completely took me by surprise; and even though this is Karen M. McManus's debut novel, I completely enjoyed her writing from beginning to end! It was such a pleasant surprise because I absolutely had no expectation to begin with and this book just blew me away.

"But I'm starting to realize there are some things you can't undo, no matter how good your intentions are."

The story is written in multiple perspectives, from the first point of view of all the main characters: Bronwyn, Cooper, Addy, and Nate. That form of writing really enhances the intensity of the story because each person brings a new viewpoint about the situation; and I really could not trust any of the main characters because they're all so shady! (Especially with the title called "One of Us is Lying", I was expecting one of them to be the liar XD) This young-adult mystery book is a also page-turner for me because every chapter seems to give a new twist to the story and there's a lot of DUN-DUN-DUUNN moments—if you know what I mean XD. As the story grows more complicated and the secrets behind the characters slowly revealed, I became intensely immersed and intrigued by how it's going to end. Towards the end, I was trying to piece some clues together but I was unable to figure out who's the culprit behind it all. The ending completely took me by surprise! I won't spoil anything, of course. But after I think about it again, it actually made a lot of sense. Some reviews on Goodreads said they already saw it coming and it was pretty obvious—I'm one of those readers who are clueless and not much of a detective despite reading several mystery books in the past XD.

"Simon was weird like that. He'd make fun of people for being lemmings, but he still wanted the same things they did. And he wanted them to look up to him."

I won't say much else because I'm afraid I'll spoil all the good stuff, but I have to say this is definitely a refreshing and fun book to read for me. The mystery behind Simon's death gripped me right from the start and the plot managed to keep me interested until the end. Overall, it's actually a story that's not overly complicated and won't take too long to read. If you love mystery, then you should probably try checking this book out. Who knows you'll enjoy it as much as I did ;)

by.stefaniesugia♥ .