This book is a blend between The Breakfast Club and Pretty Little Liars, so it's no surprise that E! is developing a TV series out of Karen M. McManus' "One of Us is Lying." I can totally imagine a successful series based on the simple preamble that a central figure remains unknown until the very end, making the whole thing a perfect binge for viewers like how it turned out for Gossip Girl.
For this one, five high school students walk into detention but only four made it out alive. There's the overachiever Bronwyn; homecoming princess Addy; Nate the motorbike-riding bad boy; Cooper the all-star jock; and Simon the outcast, who's also the creator of Bayview High's infamous gossip app. While they never really knew each other, they all had one thing in common: They all have something to hide. By the end of detention, Simon was dead, and investigators concluded this is a murder case with the four other students identified as prime suspects. Turns out Simon had planned to post juicy reveals about each of them the day after he died - so who is the one willing to kill to protect their secrets?
I have to applaud McManus for developing these well-worn high school stereotypes into something actually worth reading. The most fun part about this book was watching each of these characters break out of their social trappings and transform into someone original. The author added so many layers of depth to the four cliches with the help of relevant supporting characters and through having them narrate alternating chapters to advance the plot. From cliquish to individuals you care about - you can admire the evolution of each character from when they started out having separate lives and slowly integrating each other into one another's narrative. The character I disliked most at the beginning, Addy, ended up becoming my favorite second to bad-boy Nate, who I thought had the most integrity of them all. We'll get into Nate in a minute.
Halfway through the book, Addy was surprised by how good she feels when she finally stopped waiting for controlling ex-boyfriend Jake to "tell me again I'm not good enough." She thought she'd fall back into submitting to the pain of rejection, "but I didn't, and I don't. For the first time in a long time, I feel free." I was so happy for her at this point, because everyone has that one person who hurts you by constantly telling you you're not good enough, and you get so addicted to the hurt that feeling perpetually trapped becomes your comfort zone. You never dared yourself to do or say or be anything otherwise.
And then there's Nate, who was sincerely bothered when nobody stood up because everybody else hated Cooper for the wrong reasons. Even when Nate was the obvious outlier of the four, with existing criminal records and all, I would argue he had the clearest conscience of the bunch. It was as if he was a reluctant bad boy, just that he'd grew up hardened by a difficult family, with nothing else to hope for except making it through school and day after day through the fastest and easiest thing to sell (drugs). This part Nate said were my exact thoughts about 1/3 of the book: "I like all of them more than I thought I would. Bronwyn's obviously been the biggest surprise, and like doesn't cover it. But Addy's turned into kind of a badass, and Cooper's not as one-dimensional as I thought."
I always thought excellent character development trumps every other factor in assessing works of fiction, and this book is a fitting example of that. As for the writing, McManus was succinct yet eloquent, a pleasant surprise for a debut author. Despite so, the long and steady buildup of the plot, which ultimately helped readers learn so deeply about the characters, made the last chapters feel rushed. Secrets that point toward the killer (though it's already super obvious for me from the beginning) can be interspersed more evenly throughout the book. It's quite a shame to develop such lovable characters toward the end, ones that readers have grown to care about, but spend so little time on them.
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