One of Us is Lying

One of Us is Lying

By Karen M. McManus
Published: Delacorte Press, 2017
Pages: 360
Genre: Young Adult, Thriller, Mystery
Amazon, Goodreads

Now here's your assignment: connect the dots. Is everybody in it together, or is somebody pulling the strings? Who's the puppet master and who's the puppet?
I'll give you a hint to get you started: everyone's lying.

A brain, a beauty, a criminal, an athlete, and an outcast are all in detention together under weird circumstances: a teacher found phones that don't belong to them in their backpacks. Everything is going smoothly until one of the students takes a drink of water then suddenly goes into anaphylactic shock and dies. The remaining four now find themselves murder suspects, and their lives are placed under scrutiny. As the mystery unravels one thing is clear: everyone is lying and no one is safe.

Wow. One of Us is Lying really took me for a joyride. This book has everything: murder, mystery and romance. It kept me on the edge of my seat until the very end.

The plot is great. It has a Breakfast Club vibe with a murder thrown in. Even while I was two-thirds of the way into the book, McManus kept hitting me with twists that I didn't see coming. Each character is unique and jumps out of the page. McManus wonderfully weaves each character's point of view into the story so I'm always guessing what's going to come next. I love how there's clear character development throughout the novel: Addy realizes how there's so much more to her than her boyfriend, Cooper comes to terms with his true self and Bronwyn and Nate discover there's more between them than meets the eye.

I loved One of Us is Lying. I'd recommend it to anyone looking for a good mystery to curl up with on  a rainy day.

RATING (out of five puppies):