Ooh, I am finally writing a new review.
So, I picked up One Of Us Is Lying a few weeks ago from Waterstones Piccadilly, breaking my great YA book buying ban. I’ve been carrying it around for about a week, and then, today, I read most of it (and finished it, yay!).
This is a murder mystery that is essentially Pretty Little Liars meets Gossip Girl meets The Breakfast Club. Our four main characters (and we see from each of their perspectives throughout the novel) are all forced into detention with Simon, the school’s Gossip Girl – he runs a gossip app that has never failed to be true. Suddenly, he drops dead. Our main characters are the main suspects in a murder enquiry, and he had dirt on each of them – dirt none of them wants getting out. Our characters deal with the fallout of Simon’s death each in their own way, whilst trying to figure out who dunnit.
This book did take me a while to get into, but once I did, I couldn’t stop reading. I also didn’t guess the ending, but it wasn’t a horrible shock (cough Pretty Little Liars cough) and it felt believable. I liked the use of technology in this book that other authors shy away from, and although the characters did feel cliché at times, that’s because they are clichés (geek, jock, stoner, princess) but they did start to feel more rounded as we went through the novel.
All the characters had believable back stories, parents, families and hobbies, which I really liked – the characters felt fleshed out. I also felt this book was the perfect length at 360 pages, and kept me guessing until the very end!
This is one beautiful book (with foil title and red sprayed pages) that I’m really glad I picked up.
AnnaliseBooks 