Karen M. McManus: One of Us Is Lying (Random House 2017)
Many thanks to Maxim Könyvkiadó for sending me the books!
Karen M. McManus graduated in English literature and journalism. As she says, she uses the latter mostly for writing fake news for her novels. She currently lives with her family in Cambridge, Massachusetts. One of Us Is Lying is her first novel, which has been nominated for several awards and has been on the New York Times bestsellers list for more than 200 weeks.
On the afternoon of Monday, 24th September, five students entered a room at Bayview High School in California, but only four came out alive. Simon, the head of the school’s infamous gossip column, died. Although many were angry at him for his revelations, the best motives belonged to the four other students in the same room with him. We get to know the story from their perspective.
Bronwyn: A smart, serious girl who is getting ready for Yale and never breaks the rules.
Addy: Pretty and beautiful blonde girl who obsessively loves her boyfriend.
Cooper: A leading athlete, several colleges and professional leagues have already noticed his talent in baseball.
Nate: A drug dealer, who is still on parole and has been mentioned on Simon’s blog several times.
It’s a true unputdownable read that also brings back the high school vibes. The characters are all suspicious, as they all have secrets, so not just one of them, but all of them are lying… I, on the other hand, liked all four of them while reading – my favorite was Addy. It was very interesting – and real – how much they could forge a company together if they had to deal with the same problem. I’ve read the novel in English before and the only thing I didn’t like was the depiction of the police: they didn’t seem to want to dig deep into the details of the crime.
The novel was recently made into a series that can be seen on Netflix. Of course, I checked it. It wasn’t bad, but they included several plot twists that weren’t in the book and – I think – weren’t really needed. I have to say the book was better…
The sequel of the novel (One of Us Is Next) will also be released this year in Hungarian by Maxim Publishing, and the One of Us Is Lying is available now with the movie series cover, with an extra chapter. I will definitely read it!