Book Review: People Like Us by Dana Mele

Book Title & Author: People Like Us by Dana Mele
Published by: G. P. Putnam's Sons Books for Young Readers on February 27th, 2018
Genre: Contemporary
Pages: 384
Format: Hardcover
Source: Purchased
Goodreads
🌟🌟🌟🌟
Synopsis:
Kay Donovan may have skeletons in her closet, but the past is past, and she's reinvented herself entirely. Now she's a star soccer player whose group of gorgeous friends run their private school with effortless popularity and acerbic wit. But when a girl's body is found in the lake, Kay's carefully constructed life begins to topple. 
The dead girl has left Kay a computer-coded scavenger hunt, which, as it unravels, begins to implicate suspect after suspect, until Kay herself is in the crosshairs of a murder investigation. But if Kay's finally backed into a corner, she'll do what it takes to survive. Because at Bates Academy, the truth is something you make...not something that happened.

Review:
I was massively excited for this book. I mean, anytime someone says the words "boarding school murder mystery", I perk up my ears. Those are buzzwords for me. I was nervous though. I was so excited about another book recently and that one ended up disappointing me in a huge way. So, I was very apprehensive about starting this book.

I was hooked less than 50 pages into it and I couldn't have been more excited about that. Now this book was what I'd call a psychological thriller and by now, you all should know that psychological thrillers are my favorite thrillers of all time.

Oh my god, I was totally obsessed with this book and ended up reading the majority of it in one day. I love when I can do that because it means that I'm enjoying the book and that it's a compelling book. It's hard to find a compelling thriller sometimes, but oh boy, this ticked all the boxes.

And hello, I loved all the lesbian romances in this book. I wasn't expecting it, but it only made me love the book more. There were some lesbian love triangles too. Normally, I cannot stand love triangles, but I was so obsessed with the murder mystery aspect of this book that the love triangles were a minor annoyance for me.

I'm trying to remember where I read that this book was a cross between Pretty Little Liars & Mean Girls (Goodreads, maybe?) because that was a pretty accurate comparison. It had the Mean Girls aspect with Kay, Brie, Tai, Tricia & Cori and it had the Pretty Little Liars aspect with someone taunting someone else through technology, whether it was a computer or a cell phone.

Those girls were important to the story, but my obsession was with Nola. Oh my god, I was so obsessed with her. She was the "weird girl" who Kay enlisted to help her crack Jessica's website, where all the taunts began. I am a sucker for complex characters and although Kay was complex, so was Nola. Incidentally I called Nola, Nala for a good chunk of the book. I blame my longtime love of The Lion King for that.

The book was so creepy and atmospheric and that was one of it's many pluses. Mele did a great job at setting the scene. I could see myself at Bates. I could visualize all of the girls in my head.

I had no idea who the murderer was. I had my suspicions of a few people, but nothing totally concrete. The reveal was excellent though and although I know some people had some issues with the end, it was the end that boosted this book to a five star rating for me.

Final thoughts: This book was so atmospheric, set in a boarding school, with a murder mystery. It was totally an Alexia book, so YES you need to pick up a copy.