One of Us is Lying Mini Review

I received this book on NetGalley as an eARC this does NOT change my review at all.

Originally, Angelina was going to read this book because it is a very Angelina like book, she loves suspenseful, thrilling books. I mean, I like them too but this was her book and she ended up giving it to me to read because she couldn’t get into it… and honestly, neither could I 😦

One of Us is Lying is kind of hard for me to review… I don’t have a lot of thoughts on this book really but I’m going to do my best to give a mini review.

Summary from goodreads.com

One of Us Is Lying is the story of what happens when five strangers walk into detention and only four walk out alive. Everyone is a suspect, and everyone has something to hide.
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.

• One of Us is Lying was really slow for me. I was expecting shocking reveals, thrilling twists and moments of suspense. I was expecting lies and deceit and “oh no he/she didn’t” moments and… I feel like none of that really happened. I think I was expecting too much, like I was hoping this book was going to be full of twists and there was only really one at the very ending.
• Other than that ending twist, I felt like nothing happened at all. The secrets Simon spilled weren’t that shocking (not to sound rude but I could kind if see them coming.) While I really did enjoy the characters, I never felt invested in their stories. The stakes didn’t feel high enough, there wasn’t a lot of drama (or that’s how it felt).
• I like the characters though! They were a well written, unique cast I just didn’t feel invested in their story, yet by the end of the book I wanted to bring them all into a big hug. There was a lot of character development as well and I love seeing characters change over time. The development of their personalities was really realistic considering what they went through. The writing was really good too!
• The twist. I didn’t like the shocking twist in the end on who killed Simon. Honestly, it felt wrong to me… and I don’t want to spoil it but I just think it wasn’t a really good idea to have a twist like that. I’m going to talk about it now, so please skip this part if you don’t want to be spoiled for the ending of One of Us is Lying. Highlight below to see what I’m talking about.
  • *MAJOR SPOILERS (ending SPOILERS)*Just highlight to read them Simon loved violence, he was depressed and wanted to be seen, he didn’t like being in the background because he felt like he deserved more. So he decided that he wanted to commit suicide and take some students down with him to get attention. He liked the idea of school shootings but wanted to do something more original so he decided to kill himself and frame other students. As it turns out, none of them were lying like the title says. To me, the idea of having a character who wants to shoot a school but decides to do something else is kind of a dangerous thing. I’m not entirely sure how to word my feelings on this other than it doesn’t feel right to me.

Fables Final Thoughts

While I wasn’t a fan of this book, I am DEFINITELY the odd one out. A lot of people did enjoy this book so I recommend it :). I think I just wasn’t in the mood for a mystery book. The characters were great, the writing was great, but the story felt slow and unexciting to me. I hope you like it more than I did!

2/5