Review: ONE OF US IS LYING by Karen M. McManus

FACTS ABOUT THE BOOK

Title: One Of Us Is Lying
Author: Karen M. McManus
Publisher: Delacorte Press New York
Price: 7,99€ (Amazon)

Pages: 360
Genre: High School, Mystery
Year: 2017

BACK OF THE BOOK / WHAT IS IT ABOUT?

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.

(Source: Amazon/Goodreads)

MY THOUGHTS ON IT

I read this book a long while ago and didn't write a review on it after I finished it because I read it in a stressful time when I was just writing two term papers and just couldn't motivate myself to write anything else. Then the months went by and I still hadn't written this review and I always kept it in the back of my head because I really wanted to voice my thoughts on it. 

So here, after all these months, is finally my review on ONE OF US IS LYING:

This book was extremely hyped, which doesn't always make me want to read a book and sometimes even draws me away from wanting to read it. But when I saw it in my local bookshop I thought why not and bought it. You would normally think that that was it, I took the book home and started reading it. But no. Just as I was buying the book, the bookseller smiled at me and told me that she had already read it in German and really enjoyed it. That was obviously some nice small talk - but then she felt the need to add that "it's kind of like ...". I won't tell you what she compared this book to now but only in the non-spoiler part of this review because it was a HUGE spoiler. But I will talk more about that after my rating, in my spoiler section.

Now, I love bookshops and am all for supporting them but when I buy a book online at least there won't pop up a window telling me "oh, great you've decided to buy this book, let me tell you about its ending..". So I went into the book already suspecting something that I wish I didn't...

The summary of this book already portrays the four main characters as complete American High School clichés, so I didn't really expect the book to have much depth to be honest. And it didn't have the most layered characters but they were still all more layered than I thought they would be.

Throughout the story one gets to know them better, as the book is written from their different perspectives. 

At first, I felt the most drawn towards Bronwyn ("the brain") because she reminded me a bit of Hermione. But as the story continued I surprisingly grew to like Addy ("the beauty"), who had seemed the most shallow of them all at first, the most. Addy went through the most change in this book and had a great character development the I really enjoyed a lot. 

Nate ("the criminal") was extremely likable and seemed to be the most layered of them all, which also made him the most interesting character in my opinion. His storyline got much more depth than the others' which quickly made him my favourite next to Addy.

So these three actually grew on me quite quickly and I didn't really suspect any of them to be the murderer and also thought that if one of them would have done it that I might actually be on their side.

The fourth suspect, Cooper ("the athlete") felt the most distant to me because his life mainly consisted out of sports and his chapters had detailed sports talk in them, to which I cannot relate at all. So I was always looking forward to his chapters to be over. 

Throughout the story there are major secrets that get revealed about the characters, which add more flaws and therefore also more depth to them. Since Cooper's secret was revealed rather late in the story, I will talk about it in my spoiler section. But after that reveal, Cooper grew a lot closer to me. 

I also enjoyed the relationship that two of the suspects formed and really liked reading their scenes together. 

So I ended up not really wanting any of the four to turn out to be the murderer and I could also not really imagine that one of them had been lying the entire time, although the book title suggests just that. And the thing that the bookseller had said to me was always lurking beneath the surface and I really hoped that the book would not go in that direction and that her spoiler had actually not been a spoiler at all ... but unfortunately for me it turned out that this bookseller had really given away the ending of the book just as she was selling it to me. -.-

That's why I don't know whether I would have guessed the ending myself and did not find it surprising at all. 

The very ending of the book was a bit flat in my opinion. I would have wished for a bigger realisation of the effects and the outcome of this story for the characters. 

In the spoiler section I will talk a bit more about my thoughts on the ending.

CONCLUSION

It was very easy to get into the story of ONE OF IS LYING since it doesn't feel like anything new but rather like a mixture of Pretty Little Liars, Gossip Girl and Riverdale. The four main characters who are also the main suspects for the murder started out as complete American High School clichés and were categorised into "the brain" (Bronwyn), "the beauty" (Addy), "the athlete" (Cooper), and "the criminal" (Nate). That made it very easy to keep track of them and their lives. High School stories are always rather stereotypical with drama clichés but it was still interesting to read about all of it and was never boring.

Fortunately, the stereotypes of all these characters get uncovered throughout the story and each of them gets more flaws and layers, and therefore more depth, added to them. This made all of them very likable and I especially loved the change and transformation that Addy went through. I always appreciate it a lot when a girl/woman becomes more independent. I also really enjoyed another revelation about one of the characters and I will talk more about that in my spoiler section. 

Unfortunately, the bookseller that sold the book to me compared it to something else, and that comparison gave the ending of the book away. That's why I was rather disappointed by the ending because I had hoped that it would still turn out to be different. I can't say much more concerning the ending without giving anything away so I will continue talking about it in my spoiler section after my rating. 

Overall, I must say that I did enjoy reading this book but don't think that it deserves its hype. It's so obviously inspired by some popular TV series, wherefore I can't really give it too much credit for its plot. I would recommend it to fans of Pretty Little Liars and Riverdale but I would encourage you to lower your expectations. It's a nice read and something different to what I'm normally reading but nothing more than that. 

RATING

I award this book with 3,5 out of 5 stars.

SPOILER

SECTION

I will talk about the revelation of one main character's secret and about the ending of the book, so if you plan to still read this book, don't read on. Since ONE OF US IS LYING is supposed to be a mystery, knowing about these spoilers will take away all the suspense in the book.

As I've already hinted at, Cooper's revelation came as a surprise for me and made me instantly have a connection with him, although I had felt the most distant to him beforehand.

All the characters had grown on me except for Cooper and then it got revealed that he was gay and in the closet and I could honestly not believe what I was reading. I had not expected that at all and was over the moon when I found out about it! This just made the book way better for me! I'm always starving for queer representation and had really not thought that such a hyped mainstream book like ONE OF US IS LYING would have any LGBTQ* characters. 

The bookseller had compared ONE OF US IS LYING to 13 Reasons Why just as she was selling it to me. And my first reaction to that comparison was doubting whether I actually want to buy this book if it's similar to 13 Reasons Why because I didn't like the book and I completely loathe the TV series. But when I started reading ONE OF US IS LYING, it began to dawn on me that the bookseller had possibly given me a huge spoiler by comparing this book to 13 Reasons Why.

13 Reasons Why is about Hannah Baker who has committed suicide and takes revenge on the people that she blames for it. 

ONE OF US IS LYING seems to be about a completely different thing with a character dying at the beginning of the story and four suspects of whom one must have killed him. But if somebody compares the two to one another one begins to think that there has to be a suicide in there somehow - someone taking revenge on others... 

And unfortunately, that is exactly what has happened in ONE OF US IS LYING and what I had expected from the beginning because of that bookseller's spoiler. -.-

The comparison also made me be rather disappointed in the book because it is just so obvious that the author wanted to profit from the 13 Reasons Why hype. And with 13 Reasons Why in mind, the ending does seem really lame and copied.

But I must admit that I liked that ONE OF US IS LYING did kind of portray a reversed version of 13 Reasons Why by making the suicidal person the bad instead of the good guy.