One of Us Is Lying
by Karen M. McManus
read by Kim Mai Guest, MacLeod Andrews, Shannon McManus, and Robbie Daymond
Listening Library, 2017. 10 hours, 44 minutes.
Review written June 9, 2024, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review
So — I finally got this wildly popular teen thriller read after hearing an interview with the author about her 2024 book, Such Charming Liars. I enjoyed this one tremendously.
The set-up is that five high school students get detention with the notoriously technophobic teacher at the school because someone planted a phone in their backpack – all five of them.
And then one of the students has a fatal allergic reaction after drinking water. They try to save him, but his epi-pen is missing, and all the epi-pens have been removed from the nurse’s office. It turns out there was peanut oil in the cup.
All four of the remaining students are suspects. It turns out that they, along with many other students at the high school, had strong motives for killing Simon. He ran a gossip website that was always accurate — and all four of them had secrets queued up on his admin site, ready to post.
There are four narrators to this audiobook because all four of the teens get to give their perspective. Their secrets have repercussions, and the pressures of the school finding out those secrets affect their lives beyond the murder investigation. And of course, there’s a murder investigation going on, too. The four kids include the girl who gets good grades and has her plans for Yale under control, the jock who’s getting recruited to play baseball, the rich girl who runs in the popular crowd, and the social outcast who’s already on probation for drug dealing. Because they’re all viewpoint characters, they all get our sympathy, and we become invested in the question of which one is the murderer.
This is an excellent thriller about interesting characters, and I’m happy to see it ended up being the start of a series, so I’ve got more books on my list immediately.
Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/one_of_us_is_lying.html
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Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.
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