B|t|B: Book Review – One of us is lying by Karen McManus

Title: One of us is lying
Author: Karen McManus
Published: 30/05/2017

Hello my fellow Bookworms and page turners,

We are back again to solve another mystery, this time were looking at the mystery between the pages of ‘One of us is lying’. I finished this one in 3 days, it would have been less but unfortunately I had to go to work! I’m on a bit of a mystery kick at the moment, and despite some of the characters in this being your stereotypical teenage mook, I really enjoyed this one.

In typical Breakfast Club fashion, this story takes place in detention, in this detention we have our usual suspects, Bronwyn, the brain, Addy, the beauty, Nate, the criminal, Cooper, the athlete, and Simon, the outcast.

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. But, who dun’ it?!?

From the get go i had my theories, but it was a fun ride to keep trying to figure out what exactly had happened on the day of his death because there were definitely moments in the book during which I started thinking my theory was incorrect and someone else had killed him. So overall, this book definitely wasn’t predictable even though there were two or three minor plot twists I definitely saw coming.

The writing style was well structured and interesting as the story is told from four different POVs. Athough I admit I usually think it messes up stories if they’re written from more than two different point of views, I found the complexity and confusion helped further the story, and kept you guessing. I liked some of the characters… but not all of them, as well as you can guess from the tropes they do tend to be a little one dimensional at times.

Overall, though this was a great YA murder mystery story, and it was a fun read. I know there is a second book in this series that came out in 2020, its seems to be a similar premise but surrounds the classic game Truth or Dare.

But, do you dare me to give it a go?..

Until next time, read more books!