One of Us Is Lying

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY • BUZZFEED • POPCRUSH

“Pretty Little Liars meets The Breakfast Club” (Entertainment Weekly) in this addictive mystery about what happens when five strangers walk into detention and only four walk out alive.

 
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.

All the secrets of the Bayview Four will be revealed in the TV series now streaming on NBC's Peacock!

And don’t miss the #1 New York Times bestselling sequel, One of Us is Next!

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Published Feb 28, 2023

416 pages

Average rating: 7.53

751 RATINGS

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What Bookclubbers are saying about this book

✨ Summarized by Bookclubs AI

Readers say *One of Us Is Lying* is a gripping, fast-paced YA murder mystery that keeps readers guessing with its twists and multiple perspectives. Ma...

K Olson
Jan 14, 2025
8/10 stars
Fun Young Adult book that is reminiscent of The Breakfast Club.
Kristin Rose
Nov 01, 2024
10/10 stars
This book was really good! It wasn't your typical high school murder story. Sure, your typical characters are there, and the good girl falls for the bad boy stereotype was a little stale, but the storyline was great, I loved most of the characters and I didn't see the twist coming until just before it was revealed. Definitely worth a read!
BrandeeD
Dec 10, 2025
10/10 stars
My first Karen M. McManus book and I will definitely be reading more, including the rest of this series!!!

"A sex tape. A pregnancy scare. Two cheating scandals. And that's just this week's update. If all you knew of Bayview High was Simon Kelleher's gossip app, you'd wonder how anyone found time to go to class"

Premise: 5 students - Bronwyn, Addy, Nate, Cooper, and Simon - enter detention on Monday afternoon. Before the end of detention, Simon is dead and no one knows what is going on. Simon is also the author of a rumor blog where juicy posts about most (if not all students) are revealed. Everyone in that room have a reason to dislike Simon. When the police see a post that Simon was about to publish which includes the other four detention students, they now have to prove their innocence. But as posts start being published after Simon's death, there is WAY more to the story. Who really killed Simon? Who else is involved? What is the truth and what is a lie??

This book had me from the very beginning. The whole time you are trying to figure out the mystery while also trying to figure out what secrets are true and if that secret was what pushed someone over the edge.

I really enjoyed the homage to the breakfast club at the very beginning but then it took a turn that the original definitely did not take. This novel is fabulous in the fact that it has the ability to keep readers guessing "whodunnit" until the big reveal. Some readers may figure it out right away but the twists and turns begin to make you question whether you were right or not. Some readers are not a huge fan of this book because of the stereotypical teenage characters. Personally I would say, go into this knowing that it is YA and just enjoy because you will probably be pleasantly surprised by the end of the book. The characters and the ending are messy and real and I really enjoyed every second of it.

I may not have read enough intense mystery/thrillers to be bothered by some of the details in this book. I enjoyed the different perspectives and going back and forth between different characters trying to figure out who was lying and who wasn't. I highly recommend and I hope that book 2 is just as great!


“She’s a princess and you’re a jock. And you’re a brain. And you’re a criminal. You’re all walking teen-movie stereotypes … What about you? … I’m the omniscient narrator” pg. 11

“I did feel bad watching Simon die. I’m not a sociopath. In the moment, as he turned that horrible color and fought for air - if I could have stopped it, I would have. I couldn’t, though. Because, you see, I’d taken his EpiPen. And every last one in the nurses office” pg. 71

“Me and my buddy. We had the accident on purpose. A guy paid us a thousand bucks each to do it. Said it was a prank. … It was Simon Kelleher” pg. 308

“Here’s the first thing you need to know: I hate my life and everything in it. So I decided to get the hell out. But not go quietly. I thought a lot about how to do this. I could buy a gun, like pretty much any asshole in America. Bar the doors one morning and take out as many Bayview lemmings as I have bullets for before turning the last one on myself. And I’d have a lot of bullets. But that’s been done to death. It doesn’t have the same impact anymore. I want to be more creative. More unique. I want my suicide to be talked about for years. I want imposters to try to imitate me. And fail, because the planning this takes is beyond your average depressed loser with a death wish. You’ve been watching it unfold for a year now. If it’s gone the way I hope, you have no clue what actually happened” pg. 322

“The thing is…it all unfolded exactly the way Simon planned. He and Jake snuck those phones into your backpacks that morning, and Mr. Avery found them and gave you detention, just like Simon said he would. He made it easy for the police to investigate by keeping the About That admin site open. Told Jake to post updates from public computers with details about what was really happening.” pg. 326

“I think about Simon and about what the media called his aggrieved entitlement - the belief he was owed something he didn’t get and everyone should pay because of it” pg. 349
Beckmanbookshelf
Dec 09, 2025
8/10 stars
For a YA novel, I really liked this one. I enjoyed the multiple points of view.
daph_78
Nov 14, 2025
8/10 stars
MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD!!!!!!
I reread this book and I forgot how boring the middle part of the book was.There were two things that I didn’t like about this book. The first one being that when Addy chested on jake it wasn’t made such a big deal. The second thing that I didn’t like was how controlling jake was and at the ending was so unrealistic when he was working with Simon because they were not even good friends. I really liked Nate’s and Browyn’s relationship. Too bad they didn’t end up together. Overall this book is a great for a fast read or even a reread.
4/5 stars

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