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Julia Archer

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One of Us Is Lying (One of Us is Lying, #1)

by Karen M. McManus (Goodreads Author)

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Reading for the 2nd time

read in May 2019

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Julia Archer said: " Simon is dead. That, everyone can agree on. And agree, too, that when he collapsed and died in detention only four other students, and the teacher, were present.
But who sneaked peanut oil into the cup of water he drank in that room, after previously Simon is dead. That, everyone can agree on. And agree, too, that when he collapsed and died in detention only four other students, and the teacher, were present.
But who sneaked peanut oil into the cup of water he drank in that room, after previously stealing from his backpack the EpiPen that would have saved him?
Was it Bronwyn, striving to follow her parents to Yale University? Or Cooper, torn between the major-league draft or a college baseball scholarship? Could it have been Addy, one-time child beauty pageant star? Or was it Nate – small-time drug dealer and son of a drunk dad and a mentally ill mother who vanished and is presumed dead?
Police descend on Bayview High, CA, while Bronwyn’s, Cooper’s and Addy’s families “lawyer up”, and rumors fly.
Because half the Senior Year had reason to wish Simon harm. Simon ‘s gossip app, About That, is the most trusted news source in the school, and the one students most dread to appear on. As Nate says at the police station, ‘Everybody’s got secrets. Right?’
And those secrets are cruelly revealed on About That. So who at Bayview is about to be exposed? When the police discover Simon is about to ruin the lives of all four students who were in that room, the investigation gets ugly.
Who will turn on the others to save themselves? Or can four people who have never been friends, and still don’t trust each other, work together?
Who else’s secrets was Simon about to reveal, and who can hack into his site to uncover the truth?
Phones are social lifeblood in One Of Us Is Lying, and integral to the narrative. It was phones mysteriously planted in their backpacks that landed the four in detention, after the technophobe teacher uncovered them. Burner phones keep the suspects’ communications hidden from police. Shocking new About That posts land in every student’s phone when Simon is already dead.
Under the grinding pressure of a police murder investigation and the increasingly aggressive media, high school life goes on. Couples get together, date, and break up. Hearts are broken and mascara runs as girls support each other in the restroom. Dramas break out in the cafeteria. Baseball exhibition games, beach parties, and classes continue in an everyday world that has become surreal. Each of the suspects struggles with sharply distinct parents.
The four protagonists, who take turns telling the story, are fully realized individuals the reader quickly comes to care about. The large supporting cast, too, are carefully drawn and convincing.
With the hot breath of the police on his neck in a murder investigation, Nate suspends his drug dealing. It is subtle, but notable, that despite this thread of the novel, and despite the sexually charged lives of several characters, any drug taking and serious sex happens ‘offstage’, and not on the page.
The theme that runs through One Of Us Is Lying has to be the power of friendship. Its power to get one another through the toughest times, the crippling damage when it is absent or betrayed, its power to heal that damage when a friend steps in.
A great debut novel from a new talent, with the expected elements of high school fiction, plus a murder mystery the reader wants to follow through every twist and turn to the end. ...more "

May 02, 2019 05:22AM · see review

Julia’s Quotes

“I reach out and trace my finger over the lines. Ben said I need to make the frame first. It’s made of twelve pieces of wood, six underneath and six on top criss-crossing each other like a potato waffle. I pick up a piece of chalk and draw it on the blackboard. Then I draw two stick men on top for me and Ben. I stand back and look at the pictures. There’s no way I’m going to let Shark Face help. This is mine and Ben’s. I don’t care if his mum did text my mum last night. She said Shark Face was looking forward to coming down this afternoon. But there’s no way I’m going to have that twerp hanging around. The light flickers as a bus rumbles along the road above my head. I pull the tarp off Shooting Star and take a deep breath. She looks nothing like Ben’s diagram. All”
― Stewart Foster, All The Things That Could Go Wrong

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