Since the day my exams ended, I’ve been on a
bookscapade to read as much as I can before I dive right back into my work mode
slash medical school! In the past month alone, I read Four books and I’m already
onto my fifth one! (Which by my standard is a LOT, bcz yuno me, lazy and busy,
but always hoarding books).
During one of my escapes before finals hit me, I
bought two books from LIBERTY BOOKS at Dolmen Mall Clifton. The store itself is
such a treat that I had to limit myself to only two books in order to save my ever-declining
bank account. On that trip, I bought Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman, and One Of
Us is Lying by Karen M McManus.
Moving on to the review, I think both the books
were such a huge treat for me in their own respective genres. One Of Us is Lying
is a YoungAdult Murder Mystery novel, revolving around HighSchoolers from BayView
Highschool. THE MINUTE I PICKED THIS BOOK UP, IT WAS HARD TO PUT IT DOWN!! Addictive to the fullest, full of anticipation and will get anyone HOOKED!!
(Trigger Warning: the story contains death,
suicide, substance abuse and similar subjects. Spoiler Alerts)
The books starts off simple. Five students in
detention, from very different backgrounds, all have secrets that can potentially
ruin their lives, all in detention because they got caught with phones in their
backpacks that weren’t theirs. Amongst them is ONE very twisted sociopath who
runs a gossip app called ABOUT THAT, that have messed up students’ lives
previously, and was going to continue. UNTIL the sociopath, Simon, chokes up on
water from the school’s tap, and goes through a sudden anaphylactic allergic
reactions. The rest of the four in detention hurries to find Epinephrine Pens
(EpiPen) in the nurses’ office, except, someone stole the entire emergency EpiPen
stash. Even though the Paramedics reach fairly quickly, Simon doesn’t survive. What
looked like an allergic reaction and an accident, was now being treated as a suspected homicide and a crime scene, the 4 in detention being the Murder Suspects!!
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| source: https://www.amazon.com/One-Us-Lying-Karen-McManus/dp/1524714682 |
The Story of the four continues and how they cope
from their respective secrets that were tearing them down from the inside. Not
only were some of them morally wrong, but also illegal at an extent. Just as
they thought after Simon’s death they could bury their secrets, a series of
anonymous tumblr posts starts getting published, from the perspective of one of
the pupil in detention. When the anon on tumblr also publishes the post Simon
wrote before his death about the four in detention, things go ugly pretty fast.
Now everyone is equipped with a Lawyer at all times, But also on the lowkey,
the ‘BAYVIEW FOUR’ (The name local tv gave the suspects) are trying to solve
the mystery on their own, because to them things didn’t add up the minute they
all walked into detention. Simon himself was not shy of keeping his sociopathic
abilities to himself. Pretty soon, his 4Chan threads of pure hate and terror and his comments
starts surfacing and people begin to realize this just might not be a murder
after all.
Will the police believe the Bayview Four? Did one
of them actually kill Simon? Is One of them Lying? Or are they all are in it
together? The big reveal certainly did not shock me, but did give me a sense of
relief. At least one rightful arrest made in the book gave me satisfaction that
can last a lifetime (overstatement but okay).
I think Karen M McManus did a brilliant job in portraying
such clear character descriptions and their own personal accounts of what
happened. At least this way, the readers knew what was going on inside the brains
of all the 4 in detention. Plus even though the book is around 400 paged, not for
one second I thought it was a drag. A job well done, in all honesty! Now I really
want to read more of Karen’s works and get into the whole YA Murder mystery genre! Y'all NEED to read this book ASAP! I'm not even kidding!
Lots of more book reviews coming up btw! Until
then, this is me, signing off.
Digitally
drooling,
Wurduh Jaffri
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