One Of Us Is Lying

Okay so imagine the Breakfast Club...but with a different ending. Sure there's still a lot of "from different lifestyles" friendships and romances, a lot of cliques/clique profiling, etc. But there's also a bit of murder (or like straight-up, full on, lots of bits murder).

Karen M. McManus's very first novel, YA psychological thriller, "One Of Us Is Lying" was...W H O A. 

["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."]

And I kind of sort of figured one aspect of it out before the end...at least I had picked up on the hints. Though I didn't see a lot of it coming. Like A LOT.

There's so many twists and turns and climaxes. So many fucking trigger warnings, too (like I'm pretty hard to upset/trigger, and I felt pretty shaken up during parts). Like hard-core bullying/blackmail/violence.
And the small-town feel of straight up racism, homophobia, group thing (GOD the fucking group think in this book) is so spot on, it hurts. 

Everything about this novels hurts. I'm tearing up a bit right now, that's how psychological thriller-ing it was. I can't stop thinking about it (then again, not taking a break and just diving right into it's sequel "One of Us is Next" probably isn't helping...at all). But SO FUCKING GREAT! Like...holy shit.

Okay, I think I'm just rambling now so I'll just go... (UNLESS someone has any suggestions for more books along this vein that I need to read--because I will, like as soon as possible).

Trigger Warnings (ones that don't out-right give away the climax/murderer): Bullying, Terror, Murder, Violence, Blackmail, Alcoholism, Drug Abuse, Mental Illnesses, Underage Neglect, Cheating, Homophobia, Suicide, Mentions of Large Scale Violence/Shootings, Group Think, etc

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