One Of Us Is Lying
2014
- children's fiction
- mystery and detective stories
- murder, fiction
- schools, fiction
- young adult fiction
- juvenile fiction
- fiction
- young adult fiction / social themes / friendship
- murder
- young adult fiction / mysteries & detective stories
The story
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.
What it’s like
Brisk, chatty and tightly plotted, with a crisp teen-thriller voice that moves from one alternating point of view to the next, so each chapter lands like a fresh clue card. The setting is a small-town American high school: fluorescent detention rooms, sticky hallways, parking lots at dusk, the constant glow of phones showing gossip threads. Its vibe is brainy, sly suspense with a cynical edge, the kind you tear through on a long train ride or a sleepless night when you want to play detective without anything gruesome. The pace is quick and cliffhanger-driven, with short chapters and steady reveals that keep turning the suspects against each other. Emotionally it sits in the sharp, funny, slightly defensive world of teenagers, following each character slowly admitting the truth behind their reputation and learning to trust one another. Violence is offstage: a death at the start, with no gore, and the tension comes from lies, secrets and accusations rather than physical danger. Language and sexual references are mild, typical of YA. It suits readers who want a clever whodunit with a bit of bite and no real horror, especially fans of high-school mysteries with an ensemble cast.
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