YA mystery review: One of Us Is Lying by Karen McManus

One of Us Is Lying

Think of this best selling teen novel as The Breakfast Club meets Murder on the Orient Express. During a detention, five students and a teacher are in a room, then one of the students dies. Simon, the student who dies shortly after drinking a glass of water, ran a gossip app that had a reputation for always being right when it spilled the dirt. Police quickly discover that Simon was set to post dirty little secrets about each of the four students in detention the next day, moving the four students from horrified witnesses to prime murder suspects.

There is the brainy and ivy-league-college-bound Bronwyn, the jock baseball star Cooper, drug dealer Nate, and homecoming princess Addy.

The novel is told in quick, alternating chapters between each of the four students, and first time author Karen McManus does a wonderful job keeping readers guessing what really happened as the murder club, as the four become to be know, try to unravel the truth and prove their own innocence.

If you like a good, fast-paced mystery where you keep revising your guesses about who dunnit -- or in this case, which of the five students from detention was lying -- check out One of Us Is Lying.