Who Is Lying?
McManus’s book “One of Us Is Lying” is a murder-mystery readers will want to solve
Karen M. McManus website, fair use
One of Us Is Lying is a who-done-it mystery written by Karen M. McManus and published by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Penguin Random House, on 30 May 2017.
The New York Times Bestseller “One of Us is Lying” is a whodunit mystery written by Karen M. McManus. It is about a death that occurs in a high school.
I liked that the relationships all the characters develop are intimate and sincere. The book is told in first-person point of view through the perspective of four students: Bronwyn Rojas, Nate Macaulay, Cooper Clay, and Addy Prentiss. They are later known as the Bayview Four. Each chapter is told through a different student’s perspective.
Bronwyn is 17-years-old and a smart overachiever. She is an overachiever because her little sister Maeve has cancer, so she took on the amount of two, instead of one. Bronwyn wants to attend Yale, but because of a rumor blog called “About That” she might not be able to get in.
Another character is Nate, who like Bronywn is 17. Nate is the delinquent, burnout, drug dealer of the group. He has a pet lizard named Stan and loves movies.
The novel begins with Nate being on probation for selling marijuana. He is then on the brink of jail time when an “About That” post comes out regarding his activities. However, Nate’s reason for these activities is not as it seems.
The story begins when the Bayview Four get sent to detention by their teacher Mr. Avery for having phones in their bags.
— Gretchen Mueller
Cooper is the third narrator. He is a popular, 17-year-old jock. Cooper is focused on his baseball career and has many scouts coming out to see him. But all that could end because of an “About That” post saying he did something unethical.
Lastly, the character Addy, also 17, is a popular student with perfect hair. She has been dating Jake since freshman year. Addy lives with her mom who has instilled in her and her older sister Ashton that beauty is everything.
Addy’s boyfriend Jake is controlling. When an “About That” post tells about Jake’s best friend TJ, tensions with Addy rise.
Simon is the “omniscient narrator” as he called himself. He is a 17-year-old deceased student that runs the “About That” gossip blog that is almost never wrong about all the juiciest gossip at Bayview High.
The story begins when the Bayview Four get sent to detention by their teacher Mr. Avery for having phones in their bags. Even though none of those phones belong to them.
Mr. Avery is a science teacher at Bayview and is incredibly repulsed by technology. Therefore, he doesn’t listen to the Bayview Four when they tell him the phones do not belong to them. During that detention their peer Simon dies.
After Simon’s death, everyone in town pins the whole thing on the Bayview Four. Besides their families, the only person that is on their side is a lawyer named Eli from a law firm called Until Proven.
This book had many twists, which I liked. Although I was expecting a lot of them, there was one I did not pick up on until the very end.
There is one thing I did not like about the very end. It ended kind of abruptly because it skips ahead three months to when the lingering drama between some characters gets cleared up.
I am reading the sequel to this, “One of Us is Next”. It is pretty good so far, but I don’t think it will be anything like “One of Us is Lying.”
I would recommend this if you like twists, mysteries and whodunits. It was very fun to read and once you get into it, you won’t want to put it down.
