One of Us Is Lying 

By Karen M McManus

Blurb: 
The Breakfast Club meets Pretty Little Liars, One of Us Is Lying is the story of what happens when five strangers walk into detention and only four walk out alive. Everyone is a suspect, and everyone has something to hide. 

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.

Review: 
This review is going to be quite short and possibly different from my other reviews.

First scene is where 5 students have been given detention in Mr Avery's class for having 'their' mobile phones in their bags. How cliche! After reading this first scene I really didn't want to read on, but I thought I'd give it a bit longer rather than the poxy 6 pages I read.

So they're in detention when Simon's water bottle goes missing he asks for a drink, a car accident happens in the school car park, then Simon takes a drink from a cup within the lab and has an allergic reaction and dies. The other 4 students are then set up for murder.

To be honest the actual story line and the plot was quite good, I really enjoyed the suspense of it and how things were turning out. I just wish they were better characters who had developed more so you could feel more connected to them. The characters just seemed to get on my nerves a hell of a lot, control freak, two faced, push away, jerk, attention seeker, and oblivious to a bad relationship. Those are just a few words that I would happen to use to describe the majority of the characters.

The whole set in a school scene was to be honest okay now that I understand why from the ending of the book, but I just wish it went elsewhere other than the one scene or go on about the one scene constantly. I know that was part of the whole point of the book, but I like adventure and a change of scene. The one good point about it being set in a school the author got the environment perfect because it is really bitchy and the things that were happening in the school do actually happen in real life school.

I felt like the writing style was the thing that was putting me off the most, I love having different views from the character's but it was how they were wrote that wasn't correct. I don't exactly know what I mean by that but it just felt forced. It felt like the style of writing didn't exactly match the characters personality or actually change throughout the book. I would have thought that when the character changed the style of writing would have changed too. The author may disagree with what I'm saying here but I really thought that it didn't change what-so-ever.

The ending! Well to discover the whole murder investigation ending was really good I enjoyed, that it took a really good twist that I wasn't expecting. But to be honest I feel like the subject should be dealt with a lot better and people should be more supportive, but then again it's the real world people who turn a blind eye to mental health issues.

The epilogue was just cheesy and cliche, it was expected from the ending of the investigation and was just kind of a pointless ending. If I was the author I would have just left it at the end of the murder investigation, I wouldn't go on to say how the others coped and what happened in their lives from the day. We can expect them to be different we can expect people to get with certain people it's ovbious. Why not just let out imagination run wild and make an ending that we want rather than you telling us how things were all happy ever after. Eurgh!

Overall I wouldn't recommend this book, it wasn't well written in my opinion, it wasn't as fast paced as I would have liked it to be. It was a good plot though so if you can put everything to one side and just enjoy the plot and nothing else then read this book, but otherwise read something else from your to be read pile, this isn't worth the read. Sorry not sorry! Everyone has their opinion and this is mine. However I'm open to people sharing their's in the comments.

Favourite Characters: Nate

Read: 13/08/18 -16/08/18

Reason's Behind Favourite Character: The only reason I chose Nate was because if I had to choose one it would be him. He just seemed like the less of a jerk, he had family issues, an alcoholic father and a bipolar mother. I feel like the subject of both these parents should have been touched on more and it would have actually been nice to have a note at the end of the book with the suicide line, and phone numbers to help people with mental health issues or are suffering with alcohol.

Nate is just a standard guy who is suffering himself and ends up in trouble selling drugs and then pushing people away who are trying to help him as he doesn't know what to do when people try to help. So that's the reason why I chose him to be my favourite character because through everything he is still here today with his tough past. 

2 stars out of 5

written by Sammie