Book Review: One of Us Is Lying by Karen McManus

Book: One of Us Is Lying by Karen McManus
Genre: YA mystery
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★

This one got a lot of buzz last year, so we decided to read it for this month's book club book.

It's about four kids who end up in detention together one day when a fifth kid suddenly collapses with a massive allergic reaction and dies. And now the investigation is all centered on them.

We get the story from all their points of view, which at first was a little much, but it didn't take me long to get into the groove and remember who was who and which was which.

We have:

Copper: the all American star baseball player
Bronwyn: the honor student and classic piano prodigy
Nate: the drug dealer outcast
Ally: the seemingly airheady beauty queen princess

And the guy who died: Simon. And his big claim to fame is that he runs a gossip column type app that dishes all the juicy stories on everyone in the school.

Mix this all up with the mystery of Simon's death, add in some interesting parental figures and siblings, plus some really fantastic secrets that EVERYONE has and you have this fun and page turning story.

And it was very engaging and lots of fun to read. As is usually the case with me, I wasn't that into the actual mystery (and really it didn't seem like this was the main center of the book either) but was very into the relationships of these four kids with each other, with their families, and with their other friends. Really lots of great characters here and lots of modern day struggles addressed. I look forward to discussing it at book club this week.