“One of Us is Lying”: Recommendation or Denunciation? ~ Heidi

“One of Us is Lying”: Recommendation or Denunciation?

In this blog post, I will be discussing “One of Us is Lying” by Karen M. McManus. “One of Us is Lying” is a high school murder mystery centered on the mysterious death of Simon (the outcast) in a detention room with four other students. These five other students include Bronwyn (a Yale Bound rule-abiding student), Addy (the beauty or homecoming queen), Nate (the criminal already on probation), and Cooper (the athlete/all star baseball pitcher). One of us is lying, takes readers through the student’s inner secrets and challenges the reader to figure out who’s lying before the end. 

 

I first read this book two years ago, and I was pretty disappointed. Prior to reading it, I read many reviews and book blogs (similar to our classes) hyping up the book as a huge, mind blowing, revolutionary murder mystery. However, predictable is the only thing I would call this book. To me, the culprit was pretty obvious from the beginning, and when I was about 100 pages I had a pretty convincing theory. From that point on, my only goal to finish the book was to truly confirm if that theory I had was correct. I don’t know if it was the predictable culprit, or the overhype, but this book was simply okay to me. There are much better murder mysteries in the book world who do a better job with this type of storyline. I will give a recommendation later in this blog!

I also didn’t like the overuse of the tropes established in the book. The overuse went to the extent of reliability, and the book started depending on the characters stereotypes to show character growth. For example, one of the characters, Addy, is depicted as a beautiful popular high school girl. I wonder where we’ve heard this trope? Later in the book to show her growth, she cuts her hair to symbolize in a way “cutting something my boyfriend likes to show I don't need him”. I love Addy as a character, and the emotional breakthrough she goes through in the book is immeasurable. I believe the author could have done a better job in showing her growth, than the overused trope of a girl cutting her own hair to show rebellion.  

The book also includes an intense amount of slut shaming, and this book helps depict the harmful narrative about cheating women. For example, there are two cheating characters in this book. The first is a woman who cheats once in the book while drunk. The other is a male character who emotionally manipulates their partner for months and physically hurts their partner as well. Throughout the book, the woman is constantly slut shamed for cheating and the consequences are plentiful. However, the man who has done this disgusting manipulation is not held accountable once. By not calling out this harmful behavior, the severity of the situation is lessened, and slowly normalized. 

I also did not like the vilification of mental illness in the book. (SPOILERS AHEAD) 

Readers learn in the end that Simon had severe depression and to take “revenge” on his classmates who wronged him, he decides to stage his own suicide and frame his classmates. This message spreads the idea that people with depression only want to commit suicide to frame classmates in their school. This vilification also implies Simon committed suicide because of his mental illness, and not because of the harmful school environment around him. 

However, with all the book’s faults, I do have to say the author has a nice writing style. Her writing style is very fluid and intriguing, where even if you know the culprit, you want to keep reading.  Although the suspension of finding the murderer was spoiled for me shortly, the writing of the book made it easy to move through, and regardless I still enjoyed reading the book. If you want a good high school murder mystery, I would recommend (again!!) “A Good Girls Guide to Murder”! I love this book so much, and it does a great job in keeping suspense high, ang executing that anticipation well.

 

Referencing back to my blog’s title, I would ultimately say I denounce this book. Sorry to all who wrote a book review or blog on this book! I am in no way criticizing other people for liking this book, I just did not like it too much.