One Of Us Is Lying is a murder mystery about five highschoolers who go into detention, but only four come our alive. The dead guy, Simon, runs a notorious school gossip app and it transpires that he was just about to publish life-wrecking dirt on all four of his co-detentionees. All four are under suspicion, but is the real killer still at large?
Okay, I've seen this book advertised everywhere and usually over-marketing would put me right off a book, but I won a copy of this in a raffle at school, so I decided to give it a go.
Murder mystery isn't something I read a lot of generally, but I have read nearly every one of Agatha Christie's books, so I have a certain appreciation for a well-crafted plot that keeps you guessing as to the identity of the killer. And this book certainly did that. I kept changing my views on who had killed Simon until the final reveal.
I think the multiple viewpoints let the book down a bit. I found it hard to distinguish between the different characters - their voices weren't individual enough - and it made me think that none of the four narrators could possibly be the killer because of certain things they revealed (obviously I won't reveal who the killer is - I guessed it near the end, but I was kept guessing for a long while).
Also, I'm kinda over books riffing on the Breakfast Club. The 'Ragtag Band of Misfits who Come Together to Defeat a Common Threat' trope wasn't even original when John Hughes made the film and I'm starting to roll my eyes every time I read straplines that start 'The Breakfast Club meets ..... '.
There was some romance in the book (because hey, if you're writing a YA novel you gotta shoehorn some romance in!). I don't think it really added to the plot and I think it would have worked better if the two characters had just been friends.
All in all this was a fairly good book, but it's been a few weeks since I finished it and I had to get my copy out to flick through before I wrote this review, so it obviously hasn't made a huge impression on me!
3 stars