One of Us is Lying (One of Us is Lying, #1) by Karen McManus

My rating: four stars

Genre: YA, contemporary mystery

Edition: audiobook

Goodreads Summary: The Breakfast Club meets Pretty Little Liars, One of Us Is Lying is the story of what happens when five strangers walk into detention and only four walk out alive. Everyone is a suspect, and everyone has something to hide.

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.

I have heard so many good things about this book recently. I honestly had no clue what it was about, but when I read the synopsis it really gripped me enough to get it on Audible immediately! I used to read mysteries/suspenseful books all the time but for some reason I haven’t read many at all recently. I am so glad that I read this because it has fanned that flame under me to read more mysteries!

Likes: I like how much backstory we learn about the characters in this book. I often don’t like books that take place in a short amount of time because I don’t feel like it is flushed out enough, but Karen did a great job describing and exploring the characters. I feel like I truly got to know all of them and their secrets. That was another thing that I appreciated – the secrets and insecurities the characters had. Everyone has insecurities and/or secrets that affect their daily life and how they act. I like that at the beginning that the characters didn’t seem that lovable but by the end I had gotten to know so much about them and why they are the way they are that I truly did appreciate them. This made the story seem believable and enjoyable. I like that Karen tried to trick us by not showing the secrets first thing. It added some suspense to the story and helped keep me interested. However, it mainly made me interested because I wanted to learn more about the characters, not because it was tricking me. Which leads me to my dislike…

Dislikes: This book was so predictable to me. I remember just a few minutes in to listening to the book I told my boyfriend my guess, and it ended up being correct. This just made it less enjoyable to read. I saw all the ways the author was trying to lead me astray and just didn’t believe them, which made it less fun.

Overall, I still did really like this book. The characters and their backstories were well flushed out. They seemed relatable and real to me. I like that there were multiple POVs for each character, it helped me learn more about them and it added multiple little plots inside the larger one. I had a great time listening to this book, it makes me want to read more mysteries! It was extremely predictable to me though which is why I gave it four stars.