By Neha, Grade 9
Book Review: One Of Us Is Lying
One of Us Is Lying is a murder mystery, inspired by The Breakfast Club. It starts when teenagers Bronwyn, Simon, Cooper, Addy, and Nate are all found in detention together. There, they found that they were all in detention for the same reason–someone had planted phones in their backpacks, which got them in trouble with their teachers. While in detention, a startling car accident happens outside, and as the teachers leave the room to check the crash, Simon has a deadly allergic reaction. Since the four teens were the only ones in the room at the time, they became the primary suspects of the investigations, and their lives were taken over. After moving past the point of resenting or suspecting each other, they start to work together to try to solve the mystery.
This book was honestly amazing. I had to remind myself to take breaks and go to bed while reading it, since I was so desperate to find out who killed Simon. I have a lot of praise and very little criticism for this book, since I felt like the overall concept and plot was very strong which made the characters and settings flow along easily. I really liked how author Karen McManus modeled each character after a common teen stereotype (Bronwyn as the brain, Addy as the beauty, Nate as the criminal, and Cooper as the athlete) but also managed not to make the characters one-dimensional or boring.
Although there are barely any details about this book that I didn’t enjoy, I’m going to be a little nitpicky. Regarding the character Bronwyn, the brain, I felt like she definitely wasn’t the strongest character in this novel. She just seems a little too perfect- good grades, good looks, and rich. Yet, McManus still chose to write the first chapter from Bronwyn’s perspective. I often feel like the first character I’m introduced often becomes my favorite character throughout the book, but that didn’t really work out with Bronwyn. And the entire epilogue was from her perspective as well. I would have appreciated McManus starting out with a stronger character, like Addy, and including perspectives of all the characters in the epilogue too.
But aside from that one small criticism, I have SO MANY compliments for this book. First of all, the entire concept of the plot. “The Breakfast Club with Murder” is already such an intriguing concept that I probably would have devoured this book even if it was just called that. The title itself, “One of Us is Lying” is so well thought out that it immediately drew my eye. And the plot just kept reeling me in. There were so many little side arcs that accompanied the main plot of the murder mystery, like Bronwyn and Nate’s romance and Cooper’s coming out were executed so perfectly that I found the pacing perfect but still suspenseful. The characters were also extremely well-developed, even though they were built from teen stereotypes. All four of them had things going on below the surface–secrets that they kept private from the reader too, which just made me want to know them even more. The concept of narrators keeping secrets from the reader also intrigued me, and it was executed well. By the time the final chapters of the book rolled around, all four of the protagonists were acting in ways that their original stereotypical selves couldn’t have ever acted.
Ultimately, this read was absolutely amazing. There was an amazing plot, amazing characters, amazing chemistry, amazing depth, amazing suspense, which all melded together into an absolute delight of a novel. Even my tiny criticisms cannot amount to much when pitted against the sheer amount of joy this book gave me to read. I would completely recommend this for anyone, even if murder mysteries aren’t your thing–there are enough different varying side arcs that this read could work for pretty much anyone. This is an easy 5 stars.
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