I love how the book started and how it ended, the book mainly focus mysterious and funny things. I really love it.

The plot twists in this book! Ah!

Before going into this book everyone was talking about how it's like The Breakfast Club aka one of the best films of all time. I thought there's no way this book could actually live up to the standards of this classic film, however it came pretty close.

At the start of the book we meet 5 characters, they're all in detention claiming they were framed, then an incident occurs and one of them dies. Suddenly everyone in the room becomes a suspect, did they do it? Did they work together, individually or were they set up?

Normally I'm not a big fan of murder mysteries, I usually see the killer right away or can figure out the red herrings and so by the time the killer is revealed I've lost all interest. This didn't happen at all here. All the way through I had no idea who the killer was and as soon as some new piece of evidence was exposed I was then convinced the person relating to that evidence was the killer...and yet it wasn't! The clues just kept on coming and by the end I was like "of course! Now it makes so much sense!" It was such a satisfying feeling when all the clues came together and the truth actually came out. In most mystery books there are always some little parts that don't get resolved however here everything was rounded off neatly leaving you feeling satisfied yet bemused that you didn't figure it out for yourself.

At the start of the book the jumping between characters can be a little confusing however stick with it because as soon as you find out more about each character it suddenly becomes a lot easier to switch between characters and they each have their own unique voices. Although the characters have such different personalities I found myself loving each and every one of them! There is also a love story developing throughout the story however instead of the soppy teen romance you are thinking it is cute and completely not forced like most YA books nowadays. You find yourself rooting for the two lovebirds and hoping they aren't involved in the murder.

Definitely one to read if you like thrillers as this one will leave you guessing till the very end and you will never guess who the killer is!

Wow! This happens to be one of the best mystery novel that I have read in a while. The plot, the characters, the pace and the quality of writing are exceptional.

Five students have to do detention for the same offense!

Simon is the school gossip who runs an app where he posts some disturbing material. Many have suffered at his hands.

Addy is the popular girl with the perfect boyfriend.

Bronwyn is the perfect student, heading for Yale.

Nate is the bad boy with a criminal record.

Cooper is the star baseball player, admired by all.

A diverse group with one thing in common. Secrets. They each have a secret which would tarnish their reputation if it ever comes out. Simon goes into an anaphaltic shock and dies. Is it an accident or murder? Of course everyone in the group is a suspect. The police and the press goes to town about the Bayview High "four"! More gossips appear on the social media to make everyone look even more guilty. The other thing is that, this is where they find out who their true friends really are. This unlikely group form their own circle where they can analyse the sequence of events. As the story unfolds, it becomes apparent that the police is convinced that it has to be one of them. Especially when their secrets are revealed. The surprises, twists and turns keep materialising.

This novel kept me on my toes all the way through. I like the relationship between the pair of sisters. The blossoming romance is rather sweet. The unravelling of the mysteries is intriguing and riveting. The big reveal is extremely well orchestrated and brings the story to a terrific climax.

I received a complimentary eARC from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Five kids are sent to detection for having their phones in class. Five kids, each very different in nature, but all with something in common. Simon, the online gossip monger of the group, is about to die in that very detention classroom. One of them is guilty. One of them is Lying; it's your job to find out who.

There are lots of things to love about this book. I love the Breakfast Club vibes - each of the kids are so different, each with something to gain and some form of motive for wanting to kill their classmate, and their individual stories kept me really interested throughout. I particularly liked how the most suspicious candidate is typically used as a scapegoat, and even recognises that they've unfortunately earned that bad-boy position in the school yearbook, but actually isn't that type of person at all. The author captures really well how stereotypes are a bunch of rubbish, and that people make mistakes which shouldn't have to define them forever.

It's quite clear from early on in the story, if you're familiar with any crime thrillers anyway, who the culprit is. This is by no means some amazing, mind-boggling mystery - it's much simpler than that. But it doesn't really matter because the story propels you along regardless with the need to prove yourself right!

Whilst I don't think the characters are especially unique, or the plot original or particularly surprising, something about this book really dragged me in and wouldn't let go. I had to know who was lying! And so will you.

Actual rating 4.5. This was so good! I'm really pleased.

The mystery is strong- I did just about figure it out before the big reveal but there are more than enough twists and turns and confusing aspects to keep you going and I'm sure a decent amount of people will guess wrong. I never believed it was any of the four protagonists, possibly partly due to the first person narration so that really only left a couple of options

The backstories and character development were all really well done too, I loved all four of them for different reasons. I think Addy is my favourite at the end, she grows so much and has a real journey of self discovery which was just lovely to watch unfold. I didn't like Jake from very early on, when he made Addy get changed to go to the beach but I never imagined it would end up with him framing her for murder then trying to kill her himself. What a wanker. Bronwyn was brilliant, intelligent and flawed and confused but her backstory was the weakest and although I like her, I feel much more intensely for the other three. Nate was really interesting- his story was so intense and constantly changing. I loved his relationship with Bronwyn and I ship it so hard it's ridiculous. I am choosing to believe they end up together after going to see Insurgent. Cooper's story was beautiful and heartbreaking and life affirming and I love him.

The epilogue where they're all still supporting each other made me cry.

I honestly don't really feel like there are any weaknesses in this. The mystery is slightly far fetched but still believable, the characters are brilliant, it's well written and paced perfectly.

This is a gripping read with loveable characters. Think Breakfast Club with a ‘murder’ thrown in.
Five students are given a detention after school but only four of them leave it alive. The investigation that ensues uncovers secrets and forces truths. One of them must be lying, but who and why? I did guess the answer before the end but only because I so wanted to believe all of the others! You find yourself rooting for the outcast and liking the spoilt princess. There are many twists and turns – many of them unpredictable.
The story is narrated by each of the four suspects which really allows the reader to get inside their heads and each time the story telling returns to them, we learn a little bit more about them and why they might have found it in themselves to kill Simon – the victim. The supporting cast of minor characters are well built too and link the four narratives well giving a well-informed picture of the small-town America they are growing up in. This is what I loved, I felt invested in the story, I knew the town and the people in it and was sad to see it go.
Simon had run a gossip blog which had run or had ready to run information on each of the suspects giving them motive to murder but in the end the truth lies much deeper. This is a great YA mystery with all of the ingredients for success….I loved it and am sure my students will too.

Five students enter detention, only four come out: the jock, the swot, the homecoming princess, and the rebel, leaving the much-disliked Simon Kelleher - the brains behind a devastatingly accurate school gossip app - dead. And so begins a police investigation that has the power to destroy all their lives and root out secrets they'd all prefer were kept buried.

One Of Us Is Lying is an absolutely brilliant read. Despite accurately guessing whodunnit at about 20% (this is not at all a judgement on the book, which is excellently plotted - I read a lot of thrillers and this is frequently an issue for me), I still felt compelled to keep reading. The characters of Cooper (jock), Bronwyn (swot), Addy (princess) and Nate (rebel) are so fully rounded that I was more than happy to go on this journey with them, despite knowing where we'd end up. Comparisons to The Breakfast Club are inevitable, but this is so very much more than that film: more complex, with more likeable characters, and with much greater tension and higher stakes.

Title : One Of Us Is Lying
Series: Standalone
Author: Karen McManus
Rating : 4 effing stars!
Recommend : YES.
HEA . . .
_____________________

I genuinely enjoyed this book more than I thought I would. It was full of suspense and kept me on the edge of my seat. Always guessing what would happen next. Who the heck was the suspect now?. In a way the author had me believing every single one of her characters were guilty at some point or another through out their journey.. And you know whats even better?. I felt sad, mad and scared right along with them-- FOR them. It was my first book by Karen but I can promise it won't be my last!!

I was so excited to read this book and it started off well. I found the premise of The Breakfast Club with murder so intriguing and the tension mounted throughout. However, there were elements of the plot that I didn’t enjoy and I would give a definite trigger warning about the treatment of depression.

The main characters were interesting and well-developed, though some of them defied stereotypes and others reinforced them. I liked reading about the events from four viewpoints and thought the four distinctive voices were very strong.

In terms of the thriller aspects, I found this book exciting and I enjoyed trying to work out the clues. It was so fun trying to decide who was lying and who was responsible. Unfortunately, there were plot points that I found disappointing and that stopped me from giving the book a higher star rating overall.

This book had great potential but for me it didn’t quite match up to the exciting premise and title.

I liked this book. I thought the writing was a breeze to read through, although it did seemed like I was reading a fanfic sometimes. A very good fanfic.

There were many POC characters, which I liked. It surprised me how I found Bronwyn likeable at the start but grew to dislike her at the end. She got pretty annoying, but I guess that was her personality. They all had different persona to one another- the main characters. So it made the story even more fascinating to read. I wanted to learn more about each of their background, why they were the way they were, plus why on earth they were chosen to be in that detention room at that time.

Throughout the whole story, I never stopped thinking about who done it. When I figured it out in the last part of the book, I was so frustrated as to why it took me so long. Then I realised, it was because they all had secrets and they were all lying about something, which made me suspicious of them all.

I was very satisfied at the end of the book, about the real killer, the ending. Everything was good. I would recommend this book to any of my friends who love reading whodunnit stories.

Summary

One Of Us Is Lying is a book which hit all my expectations and then surpassed them. It completely took me by surprise from the off and I was hooked throughout the book. It’s a contemporary YA crime fiction novel set in a high school. The premise is simple – five students, each epitomising a stereotype, enter detention one day. Only four, however, leave alive.

Everything about this book worked for me. While simple in concept, everything that was built upon that was mixed up in twists and turns, with characters that I could almost reach out and touch and a mystery that got my thinking hat on.

There will be mild spoilers in this review – I enjoyed this book too much for there not to be, but there will be nothing that will interfere with enjoyment of the novel itself, just hints at what’s to come.

Plot

McManus took a risk with this book and wrote it from the perspectives of the four accused students, the ones who emerged from detention alive but with their lives ruined. Each one had a motive and anyone could have done the deed. It would have been very easy for it all to slip out in the PoVs, but McManus did an incredible job of propelling the story through the characters and still convincing the reader that the characters could be innocent, but they could also be very guilty, at the same time.

I particularly enjoyed how, while there was the over-arching storyline of who the murderer was, there were also a number of other sub-plots to sink your teeth into. Each of the characters’ lives started intertwining, and each one had a reason to be there, be it aiding in the characters’ development or shining more light on the mystery. The whole book felt incredibly well put together, with sublime pacing and a plot filled with so many twists and turns that I could not guess for certain who the culprit was until the ending of the book.

Characters

McManus does not scrimp on anything in this novel, and nowhere does she put more heart than in the characters who really make the book alive. When I first started, I was worried that each character would be little more than the stereotype assigned to them at the beginning of the novel, but as One Of Us Is Lying progresses, those stereotypes are peeled away and real, fully-fledged people step off the page. This was so well done you didn’t even notice it happening until it already had.

I ended up loving all of the main four characters, which is a rarity for me. None of them felt overlooked and each contributed to the overall plot. This is so much the case that I am really struggling to decide on which is my favourite. As well as the rarity of having no main characters that I dislike, McManus does the incredible job of having me support the central romance of the novel, which was built up and described in a realistic and fun manner. The two characters involved felt like they had chemistry and would have ended up together even if McManus never intended it. I also really liked that there was an LGBT relationship in this novel and that everything about it felt natural. While, sadly, not the main focus of the book, I found that it taking on a slightly smaller role in the book really worked within the overall make-up of the story and in the involved characters’ personal development.

Final thoughts

As you may have guessed from the words above, I adored One Of Us Is Lying. Not only did I thoroughly enjoy this novel, but it was a novel I was fully invested in, that made me want to go back and reread the minute I came to the end. It made me smile, it made me groan in frustration, it made me cry out loud with both annoyance and excitement. It was definitely one of the best books I have read so far this year.

I absolutely loved this. Billed as The Breakfast Club meets Pretty Little Liars it was always going to capture my attention.
The detention murder in the book is very early on and we then get to learn about the other 4 students and the secrets they are hiding. Basically all of them have a motive for killing Simon who runs an app which exposes peoples secrets at school.
I never suspected the actual killer at all and considering I read loads of mysteries and generally suspect everybody that is saying something.
I can't wait to read more from this talented author.

I enjoyed this and read it in a day. It was interesting and it grabbed my attention and I couldn't put it down. It's really different to a lot of books I've read so it was really nice and refreshing.
You question everything and wonder if any of it is true. I did find it slightly predictable but I still really enjoyed it.
I would definitely recommend this if it sounds interesting to you.

Five students go to detention. Only four leave alive.

Bronwyn, studious and hardworking, Addy, beautiful and vacuous, Nate, troubled and unpredictable, Cooper, popular and sporty, and Simon, gossipy and excluded – all five are given detention for bringing phones to class. The worrying thing is none of them actually owned the phones, and even more worrying is that Simon never makes it out of that class room. Someone wanted them all in there, but who? With each student hiding a life changing secret that was about to be revealed by Simon on his gossip blog, they all have motive. Each claims innocence, but one of them is lying.

Every now and again a book comes along that blows you out of the water. This was one of those. On the surface it seems like you have a line-up of the usual high-school stereotypes; the jock, the beauty queen, the criminal and the nerd, but just a few pages in you discover just how multi-faceted these protagonists really are. Each chapter is told from a different character’s perspective and slowly, through their own words, the reader learns of their secrets and possible motive for killing Simon. The problem is, the more you read the less you want any of them to be a killer. They are such fantastic, well developed and likeable individuals that you’ll be torn between finding out who did it and feeling like you are going to lose a friend. Special mention has to be given to Addy, who at the start seems like nothing but an empty vessel for her boyfriend’s personality to fill, but by the end will have you punching the air in delight at how strong and independent she actually is.

This murder mystery is not only filled with tension, suspicion and completely unpredictable twists it also shows why trying to identify someone by labelling them as a classifiable stereotype is not only limiting but also wrong. I cannot recommend this enough, one of the best of 2017 – which is saying a lot as it is only March.

I was pleasantly surprised at many points throughout the book - lots of unique plot twists and likeable, believable characters. This novel unpicks the very essence of what makes people good, and bad, and everything in between.

I received an ARC of this book for an honest feedback.

I enjoyed this book, it's well-written and It gave me a hard time to put it down. It's a fast-paced story and it keeps you interested from the first pages. Although I have to admit that the ending was a little bit predictable it didn't made it less fun to read.

Oh, how clever. I thought it was and then the author led me astray and, and... I wish I could twist everything and slowly eke out the slowly, drip-feed clues and keep building the sticky school social web, spinning and twisting the character's lives.
Five kids end up in detention through no fault of their own.
One of them dies.
The story follows the remaining four students' lives as secrets are revealed and clues are unravelled, friendships broken and made, relationships bent to the point of breaking, families suffering whiplash from the onslaught of did s\he/didn't s\he.
Lots of people have compared it to Breakfast Club and they're not wrong, but there is so much more going on.
Look forward to more from this author.

I'm not really sure why I'm surprised that I enjoyed this.

Granted, I don't read very many murder mysteries, especially ones that have a 'Breakfast Club' twist on them, but I genuinely thought this was a strong debut with great character development.

And that's what it was really, a character study which held a lot of truth and realism about the stereotypes and pressures of being a student in high school. There are cliques and sub cultures you're supposed to fit into, as well as expectations of you and who you're supposed to be. But this story really hit home that you do not have to be what anyone says you're supposed to be, and yet you can still succeed. Being yourself is more important than that.

While I thought the story was slow in the beginning, it really grew on me as we were introduced more to the characters. Four students watch a fifth die during detention, and one of them is lying about who did it. We continue on from the murder to see the consequences of being a suspect in a murder inquiry, and how they find out the killer, but also how the situation changes them and their lives forever. I especially found Cooper (the jock) and Addy (the princess) to have the most character development as well as the strongest voices, but Bronwyn (the brains) was clearly the lead character and yet her POV were sometimes the weakest.

An exciting debut with an interesting twist, with great characters and an important message!