One of Us Is Lying
Karen M. McManus, 2017
Mystery, thriller & crime Young adultContemporary fiction
A high-school gossip app turns a routine detention into a murder case, and four students with everything to hide become suspects. The story moves quickly through four wary voices, with gossipy tension and a steady hum of dread as suspicion shifts.
Feels like curiosity, dread and unease. About society, identity and power.
Who it’s for
You may like it if you enjoy high-school dramas where friendship, secrets and suspicion get tangled with a murder investigation. The four alternating narrators can blur together at first, and the gossip-app premise asks you to accept a lot of teen intrigue.
Why read it
It gives you a tense, character-driven mystery about reputation and what people hide, and the high-school setting keeps the stakes close and personal.
A page from the book
What a parent’s ambition feels like from inside the child.
My hand hurts within minutes. It’s pathetic, I guess, but I can’t remember the last time I wrote anything longhand. Plus I’m using my right hand, which never feels natural no matter how many years I’ve done it. My father insisted I learn to write right-handed in second grade after he first saw me pitch. Your left arm’s gold, he told me. Don’t waste it on crap that don’t matter. Which is anything but pitching as far as he’s concerned. Karen M. McManus.McManus has said the idea began as The Breakfast Club recast as a murder mystery.
Books that feel like this
More by Karen M. McManus
One of Us Is Next
Karen M. McManus, 2020
When an anonymous texter revives Bayview's truth-or-dare game, every secret becomes a countdown and everyone is a suspect.
Where to get it
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Questions readers ask
- Is One of Us Is Lying for me?
- You may like it if you enjoy high-school dramas where friendship, secrets and suspicion get tangled with a murder investigation. The four alternating narrators can blur together at first, and the gossip-app premise asks you to accept a lot of teen intrigue.
- What is One of Us Is Lying like?
- The story moves quickly through four wary voices, with gossipy tension and a steady hum of dread as suspicion shifts. Feels like curiosity, dread and unease. About society, identity and power.
- What should I read after One of Us Is Lying?
- If you liked One of Us Is Lying, try Behind Closed Doors (B.A. Paris), City of Fallen Angels (Cassandra Clare) and Disclosure (Michael Crichton).
A taste of the feed
Perfect manners can be the most frightening thing about a person.
We go downstairs and in the hall, he takes my coat from the cupboard and holds it open while I slip my arms into it. In the drive outside, he holds the car door for me and waits until I’m in. As he closes it behind me, I can’t help thinking it’s a shame he’s such a sadistic bastard, because he has wonderful manners.
Behind Closed Doors · B.A. Paris
When the primal needs of survival turn against your own humanity.
But being hungry was worse. Being hungry meant that he could smell things he didn’t want to smell—salt on skin; the overripe, sweet smell of blood exuding from the pores of strangers. It made him feel hungry and twisted up and utterly wrong. Hunching over, he jammed his fists into the pockets of his jacket and tried to breathe through his mouth.
City of Fallen Angels · Cassandra Clare
The founder who can’t imagine a life after the company.
“Nobody knows,” Sanders said. “Bob built the company from nothing, fifteen years ago. When he started, he was selling knockoff modems from Korea. Back when nobody knew what a modem was. Now the company’s got three buildings downtown, and big facilities in California, Texas, Ireland, and Malaysia. He builds fax modems the size of a dime, he markets fax and E-mail software, he’s gone into CD-ROMs, and he’s developed proprietary algorithms that should make him a leading provider in education markets for the next century. Bob’s come a long way from some guy hustling three hundred baud modems. I don’t know if he can give it up.”
Disclosure · Michael Crichton
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