Book Review: One Of Us is Lying by Karen McManus

Book Title & Author: One Of Us is Lying by Karen McManus
Published by: Delecorte Press on May 30th, 2017
Genre: Thriller
Pages: 361
Format: eARC
Source: Publisher
Goodreads
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Synopsis: 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:
I desperately wanted to love this book and I was so excited to be approved for it so long ago. Yet, I didn't pick it up until it had already been out in the world for over a year. I still have no idea why it took me so long to pick it up. I love my character driven YA mysteries and I felt sure that this one was gonna fit that bill completely.

I found myself on a pacing roller coaster with this book. It was incredibly slow to start with, and I almost decided to DNF it. Right around 30% of the way through, it picked up, started gaining speed. I started to become more invested in the story, and in the characters. By 50% of the way through it, I was totally into it, coming up with my own crazy theories about what happened to Simon and what, if anything, the Bayview Four, had to do with it.

Sister stories are always a huge draw for me, and I think it's because I have several half sisters that I really don't know well. One Of Us is Lying had two sets of sisters: Ashton & Addy & Bronwyn & Maeve. Both Maeve & Ashton came through for their sisters in really big ways. Despite what was going on in each of their lives, they were able to be sisters to Bronwyn & Addy, both of whom really needed them.

Cooper had a fantastic grandma, Nonny, who was really there for him when shit started crashing down around him. Like the other 3 students involved in this thing, Cooper had his secrets. Secrets he tried so hard to keep for as long as he could. Cooper's dad was a grade A dick and I could not stand him at all. Not once did he seem to care about what Cooper wanted or how Cooper felt. It was all baseball all the time. Even through a murder investigation.

Nate was the outlier. Like it was said multiple times, if it came to it, he would be the scapegoat. He was the only one on probation, whose parents were not involved in his life and who had no money. The other three had crystal clear legal records, had involved parents and were fairly well off. So I wasn't hugely surprised that the police department seemed to zero in on him fairly quickly.

Usually in a book like this, any kind of romance tends to weaken the book for me, but with this book, the romance between Bronwyn & Nate totally improved the book. I actually really enjoyed their romance, and was really excited to watch it progress from burner phone conversations to kissing in the school cafeteria. 

Their romance was a sharp contrast to the controlling one Addy had with Cooper's best friend, Jake. Jake was a total controlling asshole who I had no patience with. Neither did Addy's sister, Ashton. Jake was always telling Addy how to wear her hair, how to dress, where they were going etc. Addy never spoke up for herself. Out of all of the Bayview Four, Addy's character development was the best and I really enjoyed watching it.

There is a subplot where a character is outed, but I didn't see it as a twist. The way the character was outed was horrible and it caused a knot in my stomach and an urge to hug the character, but I didn't see it as a plot twist.

I was so massively disappointed by the ending and how everything was revealed. I could not have been more disappointed if I tried. It felt like the author took the easy way out with the murder reveal. Easily one of the most disappointing endings of the year, if not the most disappointing. I wanted so much more from the murder reveal and I didn't get it.

Final thoughts: Aside from the uneven pace & the massively disappointing ending, I did enjoy the book. I really liked the characters and the particular mode of death was interesting.