One of Us is Lying

SUMMARY

One of Us is Lying is a mystery themed book written by Karen M. McManus. Its about five students who goes inside a classroom for detention, yet only four comes out, cause apparently one of them is dead.

The story starts with five students held in a detention by Mr. Avery, for they were found with cellphones with them during class. All of the students claim that the phones were planted in their bags, and even produce their real cell phones to prove their innocence, but Avery ignores their claims. The five students in detention are Bronwyn Rojas, the class brain; Addy Prentiss, the most popular girl in school; Cooper Clay, a jock; Nate Macauley a druggie “criminal”; and Simon Kelleher, who runs the school’s savage but popular gossip app, About That. 

Simon, after not being able to find his water bottle, decides to get some water from the sinks at the back of the lab. A car crash outside momentarily distracts the other four students, and when they turn back, they see that Simon has taken a sip of water from the cup and had collapsed upon the floor, suffering an allergic reaction. As the students and Mr. Avery frantically for the Epi-pen in Simon’s bag (he was allergic to peanuts), they find that mysteriously, from Simon’s bag and the nurse’s office, too, all the Epi-pens were missing that day. Simon chokes and writhes until he’s taken away by paramedics. Later on, a policeman reveals that Simon’s autopsy shows he ingested a large amount of peanut oil shortly before his death. 

On and on, the police summons the four of them separately, and inform that Simon was going to post their secrets. With this information, everybody starts to suspect that maybe one of the four or all of them are responsible for Simon’s death.

Who killed Simon? Was it Bronwyn, Addy, Cooper, or Nate? Or someone else? Why were all the Epi-pens missing? Who got rid of them? And was the car accident really an “accident” or was it something else?

REVIEW

One of Us is Lying is an amazing book with fantastic plotlines with a not-really-decipherable climax which makes us read it more than once.

It’s a brilliant book and I would recommend this to everyone who loves books, especially teen mystery book lovers.