Wow this is a tense, page turner! Five kids are in detention but one of them doesn't survive, killed by an extreme peanut allergic reaction. He ran a gossip app that had upset many people but surely not enough for them to want to kill him? The other four become murder suspects, he knew secrets about them all that he had apparently been about to reveal.

More sudden twists than the Hogwarts staircase to this one and it's an interesting portrayal of what's important in the lives of teenagers. I love a whodunnit and didn't guess until near the end. Fast paced and chilling, with a love story and sexuality issues thrown in.

The premise of this book was what caught my attention and it doesn't disappoint. I got into itstraight away - the characters are all well drawn, the plot trips along at a great pace and it keeps you guessing until the end. I raced through it in a couple of days and will be recommending it not only to teenage readers but to anyone who enjoys a well plotted mystery.

YEAH......Nope.

this was not for me.

i simply didn't enjoy it.

Great use of multiple voices to tell this twisted High School tale. The subtle and not so subtle message to think carefully about who your friends are - whether real or cyber - the damning indictment of Trial by Media and the fickleness of public opinion are strong threads for teens to sublimate.

This book was brilliant! I seriously could not put this book down and finished it within 24 hours!
The characters are wonderfully written and feel so real. Their development throughout the book is superb and I found my self feeling like I really knew them.
I will say that I predicted who the murderer was but only because I'd read a few reviews before reading this book and I was way too many crime dramas to not have seen it coming but it didn't disappoint. I didn't see the twist coming either so that was a fantastic surprise.
I think the last chapter was kind of unnecessary to be perfectly honest but the rest of the book was so flawless that I can ignore it.
Without giving anything away I recommend this book to anyone looking for a gripping YA thriller/mystery style book. 5/5 stars without a doubt !!!

Five students turn up for detention, a jock, a jock's girlfriend, an overachiever, a delinquent and a gossip blogger. One of them doesn't walk out alive.
As the investigation peers into their lives, secrets thought buried are revealed, reputations are shattered and relationships are forged. But the biggest question of all is who committed the murder?

The Breakfast club meets Veronica Mars.

I thought I'd read a Chapter before bedtime just to get started and ended up finishing it at 2am with work in a few hours. It was a gripping read that kept you guessing with all of the twists and turns.
At first it seemed like another teen angst novel but it quickly became an interesting mystery and high school drama. It was excellently written and the characters who, at first, seemed stereotypical versions soon became well rounded characters with their own lives and flaws. The suspense was seamlessly integrated into the tale and I really enjoyed the brief look into various family lives.
All in all a truly great story.

When I saw this on Netgalley; that title, that description, I couldn't hit the request button fast enough.

Unfortunately, it wasn't quite what I wanted it to be. I was hoping for Courtney Summers levels of drama, but what I actually got was much closer to Pretty Little Liars.

What I mean by that is that this book is very fast paced and very exciting. It has you turning pages all night because you desperately need to know what happens. It never looses your interest. But, unfortunately, it ultimately comes off as a bit shallow. Actually, it feels sugar coated.

I never felt that the plot reached the dramatic tension that's really needed for a story like this to be really great. The "juicy reveals" that Simon was about to post, for the most part seem just ... bleh, standard? Secrets I feel I've seen a million times. Yes they hold high stakes for our characters but other than that, they're sort of bland. And this murder investigation? Barely made an impact on our character's lives at all.

The characters are pretty good. They all start off very much cliched, but it shows that the author wanted to challenge these stereotypes and tried hard to do so. Throughout the story new layers are revealed about all of them and they each become more complex, dynamic people.

My favourite thing about reading this book, though, is the unreliable narrator aspect. Obviously we're told that one of our main four are lying, and boy does that set up the novel in a great way. On every page I was constantly scanning for clues about who was trust worthy and who seemed suspicious. I tried to find accounts that contradicted each other, all trying to figure out who the murderer was and I have to say it was really fun.

However, I found the ending disappointing to say the least, which is the reason for the middle rating. Everything up until then had been fun and exciting even if a tad shallow. But that ending seemed rushed and cheap. I felt like it made my favourite part about the novel irrelevant and pointless. Honestly, I felt cheated.

But if you're looking for a quick, fun read that will keep you guessing right up until the end, then you could do worse than One of us is Lying.

This book got me gripped from the first page. It'd the Breakfast Club meets Gossip Girl meets thriller. I really enjoyed it, each character evolves and has their own distinct personality. The only thing unexplained is how Simon got all his gossip but I guess you just have to accept that he had eyes everywhere and enjoy the ride.

One of us is lysing appealed to me as it sounded a bit like Gossip Girl gone wrong.
The storyline caught my interest straight away, we flick between the multiple lead characters, learning just enough about them to start guessing whodunit, but not enough to really know or empathise with them. Some of the names were a little unusual, and made me wish they had nicknames ( Bronwyn is the prime example here) but it also highlighted the elite-ness that her family held in comparison to Nate, ( a normal name)
It a good read, and without spoiling the ending its about 50% guessable with who the ‘villains’ of the story are. This doesn’t matter though as the narration creates a who will come out of this smelling like roses mystery alongside the find the killer plot.

This is a young adult contemporary novel with a mystery element involved and is set mainly in a high school environment. We follow the story as five characters attend a detention, which is a strange group of students to be there as most of them are the hardworking type who never get in trouble at school. While they are there, one of them mysteriously starts having an allergic reaction, an ambulance is called though the student, named Simon, dies later on that evening. At first this seems like a tragic accident, but it soon becomes clear that something more sinister took place. The other four students in the room all become suspects of Simon's murder and the reader follows the experience from each of the other four students perspectives.

This book gave me everything I wanted and also so much more. I was drawn to this book because of the description on the cover, I loved the idea of reading a story based upon lies, deceit and murder. I also really liked having the perspectives from the four suspects, and I grew attached to each and every one of them as their voices were all so unique. I loved how each main character essentially represented a stereotypical personality that you would expect to find in a school environment. First of all, we have the murder victim Simon. He represents the outsider character, the person who is always trying to get into the crowd and be noticed, though has a geeky aspect to him. Then we have Nate, the token bad guy that deals drugs, and naturally everyone claims to dislike, yet many girls secretly swoon after him, and jump upon the chance to get into bed with him. Next we have Cooper, the token jock character, yet he is so much more complex than that. Then we have Bronwyn, who is a smart and quiet good girl type who just wants to do well and get into the best college she can. Finally, we have Addy, who is in the same friendship group as Cooper, and she represents the typical homecoming queen type character, obsessed with makeup and friends, and overall just very superficial. Despite these stereotypes, from reading from each perspective we learn that there is so much more than this to every person. I also loved how each and every character had a wonderful development throughout. This book is so well written, the plot fits together nicely as you jump from the perspectives and the mystery element keeps you guessing right up until the very end. At one point I did guess correctly who the murderer was, yet I wasn't convinced by my guess and even changed my mind again several times afterwards.

I love that this book also contains unexpected diversity, I won't go into the details because of spoilers, but I appreciated the genuine feel of the aspect I am referring to and I think the whole subject was handled brilliantly and also realistically. I think it was fantastic that you got to see the persons own feelings on it, other characters true feelings on in from their perspectives, and also how family handle it, which all feels true to life.

This is already one of my favourite reads of this year, possibly even all time and it will stay with me for a long time to come. This is a debut novel by this author, but I can't wait to read more by her in the future and I can't recommend this book enough.

Well what a fantastic read this was. Read it in one sitting as I could not put it down!!
Very simple plot a bunch of friends get sent to detention and one dies, who did it? I thought I had it sussed at one point but then I was wrong! Loved Nate & Bronwyn and really connected with them hated Simon thought he was vile but in the end felt sorry for him. Great twists and turns and brilliant characters I would defo read more by this author!!!

A detention, a student death, 4 student suspects.... whodunnit??
Great YA novel. Easy read
Recommended 4.5⭐️

I loved this book and how it kept me guessing all the way through. Although classed as young adult, I recommend for all readers, especially fans of psychological thrillers. 5 stars easily.

Thank you Karen McManus and Netgalley for a copy of this title in exchange for an honest review.
I have had the good fortune to read many debut authors this month and I have to say this was one of my favourite. The Breakfast Club but with a criminal twist. I'm not sure if this is classed as a Teen read but as an adult, I absolutely loved the psychological side of it. What an amazing read. I have actually read it twice to see if I could follow the twists again. I can actually see this put into a movie.
Thank you Karen McManus, you are now on my radar. I cannot wait for your next book.
I highly recommend this book to anyone.

This book grabbed me simply the illusion on the cover to The Breakfast Club. 'A Jock, A Criminal, A Brain, A Princess.' It does, however, ramp things up with a murder. The premise is five students find themselves wrongfully in detention; one of them does not survive it and suspicion rapidly descends on the remaining four. An issue which is not helped by the fact that the boy who died was the school gossip and each characters has something to hide.

Cooper, Nate, Bronwyn and Addy find their lives change in the aftermath of that day. They are questioned by police, hounded by the media and gossipped about by their peers. They also find themselves looking with suspicion at each other and at the same time bound together by their experience.

McManus does a wonderful job of bringing these characters beyond the two dimensional descriptors. I think the use of the narrative perspective shifting from one to the other helps with this, allowing us to see who they perceive themselves and by others. It also reveals to us the secrets that they are keeping. The shift doesn't allow the time frame to stall but moves briskly through the events. It give us a chance to see into the students' lives at home, the pressures they are under and how this forms their identities and choices. There was enough time devoted to their family relationships that the strength of the bonds between, for example, Addy and her sister Ashton, were very clearly portrayed. The latter going out of her way to step up as a strong parental figure even though her own life is changing radically.

I thought the title was an excellent starting point as I started reading with a sense of mistrust in the narratives being presented. The use and presence of social media and technology wasn't over done, although present it didn't feel as though there it was demonised. There are comparisons to be made to Pretty Little Liars and to a lesser extent Gossip Girl but it had a genuine softness when is came to the handling of the characters, which particularly shone through when reading Addy's perspective. The dialogue was natural sounding to my ear and created an immersion with the events. This book was great fun to read, I found that I did correctly surmise the conclusion of the plot before it was revealed but that in no way detracted from my enjoyment.

For fans of - Pretty Little Liars, Dorothy L. Sayers, E. Lockhart.

This turned out to be a far more enjoyable book than I initially expected. The characters were pretty well-realised and the mystery was interesting (and did not turn out as I expected!) A surprise winner for me.

This was a very easy read and an enjoyable piece of escapism.

What caught my eye was the initial hook of it being a bit like the Breakfast Club but with a murder-mystery twist. I enjoyed the cliches of each stereotype of the different types of 'groups' within a high school setting (jock, cheerleader, nerd etc) and I liked the way McManus started to overturn these stereotypes and make the characters into a more rounded human being.

The murder mystery bit was intersting but for me, it kind of dragged on a bit. Personally I found the twist not that much of a twist as I'd figured it out long before it happened, and found it quite exasperating how the no one else saw the obvious with it.

The book is told from multiple POVs, so definitely not one for those who dislike this technique. Personally, I enjoyed this aspect as I found I could get to know each character a little better and see them progress. Despite the book/storyline being set in something like a 6 week time span or something, there is quite a lot of character progression throughout.

Overall, a good read and great for a little 'who-dunnit' element.

The book starts with five students, apparently with nothing in common, meeting in detention - we have the jock, the princess, the genius, the criminal and the basket case. Oh wait, our basket case in this story is actually a boy managing a blog that systematically exposes the deepest secrets of anyone attending his high school, so when he ends up dead before detention is over and it's revealed that he was planing a big expose on the other four students, the police starts looking for the most likely murderer.

The story is interesting and well-paced, and manages well to keep the whodunit tone almost until the end. As you can imagine, none of the four students are as perfect as they seem at the start of the book, and as we learn their secrets we find out more about the real people behind their high school stereotypes, and although I enjoyed the character growth, somehow it felt like they still were stereotypes.

I guessed who the murderer was about two thirds into the book, but that didn't make me enjoy the conclusion any less. I won't say anything about the ending to avoid spoilers, but I'm still not sure that the outcome worked for me, I wish the murderer would have been someone different.

There's also a bit of romance in the book, and it's cute and sweet in a first-love sort of way, but for me the book would have been more solid if the focus had been in the friendship the four suspects develop because of their shared history. They are supposed to develop this unbreakable bond but at times it felt like the murder accusation was everything they had in common, which is great to start with, but if I am to believe that in the end they have a deeper relationship I'm going to need some more development than what the book provided.

There's also the matter of the narrators. The story is told from the POVs of the four suspects, but to be honest I didn't notice any change in their voices. We have two boys and two girls, each of them as different as they can be, but while I was reading I couldn't really tell them apart.

All in all this book was a lot of fun and I recommend it to fans of the classic whodunit stories and YA with a bit of a twist :)

One of Us Is Lying is a Pretty Little Liars meets Gossip Girl meets The Breakfast Club mystery thriller aimed at young adults and I think Karen McManus combines these elements perfectly for the right audience. The book is narrated from the perspective of four students who quickly become murder suspects after their classmate, Simon, dies as they shared detention hour collectively. Interestingly, all four students have their own little (or big, depending how you see them) secrets which easily puts them at the front of the investigation launched. Naturally, when you are given characters like these, it's difficult to tell who is lying and who isn't and this I appreciate the author's ability to keep us guessing throughout. Whenever I thought I could see one of them in a good light, this tentative trust was taken from me, leaving me guessing just how this mystery will unravel.

It's been difficult for me to put the book down once I started reading it and had it not been for other obligations, I would have read it continuously in one sitting without getting bored of what was coming next.

Beyond the synopsis of the book, each character came alive for me. From their personalities to their development and some key issues tackled in the story (murder aside), I was impressed by how well this has been pulled off by Karen McManus in her debut novel. A novel I will, without a doubt, recommend to friends.

One of Us Is Lying is full of suspense and mystery, unpredictability and wit, all wonderfully packed together to give readers an interesting debut to look forward to once the book is up on shelves.

If Agatha Christie wrote The Breakfast Club I imagine it would turn out like this. One of Us is Lying is an excellent story of teen secrets, Lies and murder