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ONE OF US IS LYING

From the one of us is lying series , vol. 1.

by Karen M. McManus ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 30, 2017

Although the language and plot sometimes border on cliché, this fast-paced blend of Gossip Girl, Pretty Little Liars, and...

Detention takes a dark turn when the student behind Bayview High’s infamous app About That dies from a peanut allergy—and every witness has a different reason for wanting him gone.

Although McManus’ debut initially feels like a rehashing of The Breakfast Club , with five teens from disparate social circles brought together through detention, there is no bonding through library dance parties or atypical lipstick application. Instead, Bronwyn, Nate, Cooper, and Addy witness Simon collapse and ultimately die after taking a sip of water. When police discover the drink was laced with peanut oil—and that Simon was going to reveal life-ruining secrets about all four students on his gossip app the next day—they go from unfortunate witnesses to top murder suspects. With each teen (“brain,” “criminal,” “jock,” and “princess,” respectively; “walking teen-movie stereotypes,” as Simon says) narrating alternating chapters, the novel offers insights into common adolescent struggles—from the pressure to succeed to an alcoholic, out-of-work father—as well as an unlikely romance and opportunities for self-reflection as the investigation escalates. Although their suburban San Diego high school is a multicultural place, with the exception of Latina Bronwyn, the principal cast is white.

Pub Date: May 30, 2017

ISBN: 978-1-5247-1468-0

Page Count: 368

Publisher: Delacorte

Review Posted Online: Feb. 13, 2017

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2017

TEENS & YOUNG ADULT MYSTERY & THRILLER | TEENS & YOUNG ADULT SOCIAL THEMES

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BOOK REVIEW

by Karen M. McManus

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More About This Book

BOOK TO SCREEN

IF HE HAD BEEN WITH ME

by Laura Nowlin ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 2013

There’s not much plot here, but readers will relish the opportunity to climb inside Autumn’s head.

The finely drawn characters capture readers’ attention in this debut.

Autumn and Phineas, nicknamed Finny, were born a week apart; their mothers are still best friends. Growing up, Autumn and Finny were like peas in a pod despite their differences: Autumn is “quirky and odd,” while Finny is “sweet and shy and everyone like[s] him.” But in eighth grade, Autumn and Finny stop being friends due to an unexpected kiss. They drift apart and find new friends, but their friendship keeps asserting itself at parties, shared holiday gatherings and random encounters. In the summer after graduation, Autumn and Finny reconnect and are finally ready to be more than friends. But on August 8, everything changes, and Autumn has to rely on all her strength to move on. Autumn’s coming-of-age is sensitively chronicled, with a wide range of experiences and events shaping her character. Even secondary characters are well-rounded, with their own histories and motivations.

Pub Date: April 1, 2013

ISBN: 978-1-4022-7782-5

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire

Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2013

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2013

TEENS & YOUNG ADULT ROMANCE | TEENS & YOUNG ADULT SOCIAL THEMES

More by Laura Nowlin

by Laura Nowlin

SEEN & HEARD

IF ONLY I HAD TOLD HER

by Laura Nowlin ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 6, 2024

A heavy read about the harsh realities of tragedy and their effects on those left behind.

In this companion novel to 2013’s If He Had Been With Me , three characters tell their sides of the story.

Finn’s narrative starts three days before his death. He explores the progress of his unrequited love for best friend Autumn up until the day he finally expresses his feelings. Finn’s story ends with his tragic death, which leaves his close friends devastated, unmoored, and uncertain how to go on. Jack’s section follows, offering a heartbreaking look at what it’s like to live with grief. Jack works to overcome the anger he feels toward Sylvie, the girlfriend Finn was breaking up with when he died, and Autumn, the girl he was preparing to build his life around (but whom Jack believed wasn’t good enough for Finn). But when Jack sees how Autumn’s grief matches his own, it changes their understanding of one another. Autumn’s chapters trace her life without Finn as readers follow her struggles with mental health and balancing love and loss. Those who have read the earlier book will better connect with and feel for these characters, particularly since they’ll have a more well-rounded impression of Finn. The pain and anger is well written, and the novel highlights the most troublesome aspects of young adulthood: overconfidence sprinkled with heavy insecurities, fear-fueled decisions, bad communication, and brash judgments. Characters are cued white.

Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024

ISBN: 9781728276229

Page Count: 416

Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2024

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2024

TEENS & YOUNG ADULT SOCIAL THEMES | TEENS & YOUNG ADULT FICTION | TEENS & YOUNG ADULT ROMANCE

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One of us is lying: one of us is lying, book 1, common sense media reviewers.

Dirty secrets abound in fun but intense high school mystery.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this book.

Information on how police investigations work and

Trust your gut instincts. Don't lie. Treat people

All the teen characters have lied and cheated, but

Graphic description of boy dying of allergic react

Lots of flirting and descriptions of attractivenes

Most of the characters swear, but infrequently, in

Most brands mentioned used for scene or character

Kid has a past as a drug dealer. Teens drink in pa

Parents need to know that Karen M. McManus' One of Us Is Lying is a murder mystery set in a high school. Four teens are suspects in the death of a classmate. They were in detention with the boy when he died, but no one saw anyone do anything to him. The mystery has many twists and turns, plus romance, social…

Educational Value

Information on how police investigations work and suspects' rights. Story shows the media's influence on public opinion in high-profile crime cases. Some classical piano pieces and Walt Whitman's poem "Song of Myself" are mentioned.

Positive Messages

Trust your gut instincts. Don't lie. Treat people how you want to be treated. Don't listen to gossip. Get to know people firsthand before assuming you know everything about them. Own up to your mistakes. Reach out to people in need.

Positive Role Models

All the teen characters have lied and cheated, but most learn from their mistakes and are basically good people. All four main characters have people in their lives who step up and help them when they most need it.

Violence & Scariness

Graphic description of boy dying of allergic reaction. Teen boy punches a wall when arguing with his girlfriend. One girl intentionally trips another and injures her. A girl is knocked down and choked. A lot of social and online bullying, including publishing secrets, name calling, and harassing.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Lots of flirting and descriptions of attractiveness or hotness of characters. Much of the story revolves around romantic relationships. Make-out sessions described in detail. Kids hit on each other at parties. Kissing, groping, and references to having sex.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Most of the characters swear, but infrequently, including "s--t," "a--hole," "f--k" and variations, "God," "hell," "Jesus Christ," "whore," "slut," "ass," "goddamn," "bulls--t," "bitch," "pissed," and "f-g."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Most brands mentioned used for scene or character setting, including iPhone, iPod, Starbucks, Lysol, Red Vines, Victoria's Secret, Seagram's, Jim Beam, Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Netflix, Kindle, US Weekly, People Magazine, Diet Coke, Xbox, Cartoon Network, TMZ, Abercrombie & Fitch.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Kid has a past as a drug dealer. Teens drink in parking lot after school. A few parties with teens drinking, many getting drunk. Drunk girls hit on boys at parties. One kid has parents who abuse drugs and alcohol. One mom shown drinking wine frequently. Kids in background at a party smoking pot. A girl offers a boy what appears to be acid.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Karen M. McManus' One of Us Is Lying is a murder mystery set in a high school. Four teens are suspects in the death of a classmate. They were in detention with the boy when he died, but no one saw anyone do anything to him. The mystery has many twists and turns, plus romance, social drama, and bullying of all types (verbal, physical, and online). Teen make-out sessions are described in detail. Kids drink and get offered drugs at parties, spread rumors, and gossip about one another, and occasionally swear, including "s--t," f--k," and "a--hole." Much of the plot involves kids keeping big secrets from friends and family, which provides good discussion topics. The online bullying in the book raises lots of ethical questions and will give readers much to discuss.

Where to Read

Community reviews.

• Parents say (21)
• Kids say (178)

Based on 21 parent reviews

PERFECT FOR YA READERS

Dysfunctional and inappropriate content, what's the story.

ONE OF US IS LYING opens with four students heading into detention, all thinking they don't deserve to be there. Before long, a fifth student -- Simon, who runs a popular gossip app called About That -- is dead in the classroom, and the four students are murder suspects. Not only were Bronwyn, Nate, Addy, and Cooper the only people in the room with Simon when he died, but they also all have devastating secrets Simon was close to publishing. As the story unfolds, it's possible the students have been framed, but they keep unraveling more of one another's secrets, leaving them all confused as to whom they can trust. They also learn Simon had plenty of enemies on campus, as he had wrecked many lives by posting students' darkest secrets and misdeeds. Romance, bullying, cliques, secret lives, cheating, and family issues entangle the four main characters as they try to figure out which of them did it or who would want to set them up for a murder conviction.

Is It Any Good?

This fun, engrossing murder mystery will keep readers guessing until the end. If The Breakfast Club and Gossip Girl had a baby who was raised by Agatha Christie , the result would be One of Us Is Lying . Author Karen M. McManus starts with character clichés -- the smart overachiever, the pretty and popular airhead, the good ol' boy jock, and the handsome but possibly dangerous drug dealer -- but moves past that to show most people are more than what they seem, for good and for bad. Overall, the book is a page-turner of a whodunnit.

The story is told in alternating first person by the four main characters. This approach allows the reader to see how each character views the others and gives insight into what the character is hiding. The downside is that the character voices are too similar early on in the book, making switching between them confusing at times. Even though most of the book is fun, fast reading, the action bogs down in the middle and the romance storylines get tedious. The character arcs are very good, and the story picks up after the halfway point, with lots of great twists and turns.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the portrayal of high school in One of Us Is Lying. Do you think the social scheming, cliques, and gossip in real high schools are as bad as what's shown in the book? Why do you think books, movies, and TV shows play up this part of high school?

Would you read a blog or use an app that exposed people's deepest secrets? Do you feel talking about a person's private life in an online forum is OK?

Do you ever judge people based on appearances or gossip you've heard about them? Has there been a time when you got to know someone and found out he or she was different from what you first thought?

How honest are you with your family about important things going on in your life? Where do you think the line is between regular privacy and keeping secrets?

Book Details

• Author : Karen M. McManus
• Genre : Mystery
• Topics : Brothers and Sisters , Friendship , High School
• Book type : Fiction
• Publisher : Delacorte Press
• Publication date : May 30, 2017
• Publisher's recommended age(s) : 14 - 18
• Number of pages : 368
• Available on : Paperback, Nook, Audiobook (unabridged), Hardback, iBooks, Kindle
• Last updated : December 7, 2023

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One of Us Is Lying

By karen mcmanus.

Book review, full book summary and synopsis for One of Us Is Lying by Karen McManus, a murder mystery with a breakfast club twist.

In One of Us Is Lying , five high school students got sent into detention, and four of them come out alive.

Simon is the creator of the school's gossip app, which he populates with everyone's secrets as well. When he dies, there's no shortage of people who could have held a grudge against him, but only four of them were in the room with him when it happened.

The remaining four students -- Bronwyn the "Brain", Cooper the "Jock, Abby the "Princess", and Nate the "Rebel" -- will have to piece together what happened and, of course, which one of them is lying.

(The Full Plot Summary is also available, below)

Full Plot Summary

In Part One , Simon Kelleher, a high school student and loner at Bayview High, dies under suspicious circumstances from allergic reaction in detention. Simon writes a gossip blog, and it's discovered that he was about to post incriminating information about four students in the room (Bronwyn Rojas, Nate Macauley, Cooper Clay and Addy Prentiss). They're also the four other students who were in detention, and they quickly become the prime suspects in Simon's death (known as the Bayview Four).

In Part Two , Simon's unpublished post goes up on an anonymous Tumblr account, revealing its trove of secrets. (Addy cheated on her boyfriend Jake with his best friend, TJ Forester. Cooper, a baseball player, used drugs to improve his fastball. Nate is dealing drugs/painkillers. Bronwyn cheated by stealing tests to get an A in chemistry.) Bronwyn's sister Maeve hacks Simon's blog and starts to research him to get clues.

In Part Three , the four team up to compare notes and sense something is off with a student named Janae, who had been Simon's only friend. They also note that Simon resented them all for various reasons. Soon, however, Nate (the school bad boy) gets arrested for Simon's death since there's indications he runs the anonymous Tumblr account. Finally, Addy confronts Janae, who breaks down and admits the truth that Simon killed himself. He convinced Janae and another guy, Jake (who had once been Simon's childhood friend and Addy's boyfriend who she had cheated on), to help him frame the other four students. Simon was planning on having Janae release a manifesto about it in a year. After a scuffle, Jake and Janae are arrested, though Janae gets a plea bargain.

In the Epilogue (three months later) , the four have become good friends despite all being very different types of people. Bronwyn (good girl) and Nate (bad boy) begin dating.

For more detail, see the full Section-by-Section Summary .

If this summary was useful to you, please consider supporting this site by leaving a tip ( $2 , $3 , or $5 ) or joining the Patreon !

Book Review

One of Us Is Lying is basically The Breakfast Club, if during that detention, someone got murdered and everyone became a suspect. It’s a YA mystery-thriller, and while I’m not typically a YA reader, I really like mystery and crime novels. Plus, the concept of Breakfast Club + Murder was just too catchy to pass up.

In case you’re not familiar with The Breakfast Club , it’s a John Hughes movie about five high school students who get sent to detention. They each come from a different clique at school — there’s the rebel, the princess, the outcast, the brain, and the jock — but they all manage to see through their differences during their time together.

The resemblance of the premise to this popular 80’s flick is not a coincidence. McManus states that when she got the idea for the book, she “started thinking it would be fun to write an update of that movie, which I loved, but with some sort of a twist. And the phrase ‘The Breakfast Club with murder’ popped into my head, and it just stuck there.”

From The Breakfast Club (1985)

I really enjoyed One of Us Is Lying . The mystery aspect of it was probably the most important for me, and I was pleasantly surprised by it. It comes together nicely and makes sense. You might be able to guess it before the reveal, but it’s still fun when the novel explains how all the other little details come together as well.

As dictated by the premise, the characters, of course, have a somewhat stereotypical aspect to their personalities. However, McManus does a good job of poking and prodding their stereotypical molds into fuller characters than that. They’ve each got their own set of concerns and have discrete character arcs as the story progresses.

The book moves pretty quickly and is a easy read overall. The Breakfast Club-esque aspect of it gives the book a lot of levity and a more positive and hopeful tone than your average mystery-thriller, which I thought was a nice change of pace. I also think the book does a really good job of blending the character arcs with the mystery itself. I was worried that it would fit unnaturally, like two books in one, but instead it comes together and feels like a complete story.

I don’t think this book will blow anyone away. The mystery is solid, but not, like, earth-shattering. The message from the rest of the book is fairly predictable, reminding us to be kind to others, to be empathetic and tolerant, etc. But I liked it enough that I’ll most likely read the sequel, One of Us Is Next , when it comes out in January 2020.

One of Us is Lying Movie / TV Series

There’s an film adaptation of One of Us is Lying in the works! It’s planned as a TV series to be aired on Peacock, NBC’s upcoming streaming service (to be a competitor to Hulu, Netflix, etc.).

For all the details, see Everything We Know About the One of Us Is Lying NBC Series .

I think this has the potential to be pretty good. There’s a mystery underpinning it, but lots of character arcs to explore as well, so I could see this being something like a teen version of Big Little Lies.

Read it or Skip it?

I would recommend this book to people who enjoy mysteries novels, even if you don’t typically read YA. The mystery in this book is not scary nor full of dramatic twists and turns, but it’s a puzzle that comes together piece by piece in a way that’s coherent and satisfying. There’s largely no major lose threads, and everything fits nicely.

The topics that the book explores definitely have a YA slant, but since this book is marketed as YA, that’s to be expected. It’s things like worrying about where you’ll end up at college, fitting in, coming out, etc. It’s not stuff I’m particularly interested in, but I didn’t mind it either. The Breakfast Club-esque aspects of it were sort of charming and endearing for me.

Overall, I got a kick out of reading this book, and thought the mystery wrapped up nicely.

What do you think? Is this something you’d consider reading? See it on Amazon .

P.S. See the summary and review for the sequel, One of Us Is Next (Book #2) !

One of Us Is Lying, Explained!

Spoilers start here, plus I’ll answer a few commonly asked questions! Don’t keep reading unless you’ve read the book!

I don’t have a ton of spoiler-ish thoughts. The only thing that I wish the book had addressed was how exactly Simon got all that information, especially if he’s such an outcast. I can’t imagine if everyone dislikes him that people would keep feeding him information for no reason. I would say that’s the one big thread that didn’t get wrapped up neatly.

Who killed Simon? Who’s the killer in One of Us Is Lying?

Simon is the one who killed Simon. He was depressed and resentful for wanting to be accepted, but was unable to do so. Plus, he’d been sucked into the toxic world of 4chan and sad guys cheering on school shootings, but he wanted to do something more “creative”. As a result, he planned his own suicide around taking out (e.g. framing) people who he had a grudge against.

Scroll down for a full summary of the plot (click “Show/Hide Detailed Summary”)

Where can I find a summary of the full plot of One of Us Is Lying?

Right here! See the full section-by-section summary and synopsis for One of Us Is Lying by Karen McManus.

Book Excerpt

Read the first pages of One of Us Is Lying

Movie / TV Show Adaptation

See Everything We Know About the 'One of Us Is Lying' Adaptation

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Whew. Sounds more like The Breakfast Club meets 13 Reasons Why meets The Joker meets Gossip Girl. Can’t wait to read this.

One of Us Is Lying is a fantastic book and certainly one I would recommend for anyone interesting in the mystery genre. I’m 12, and I found the book incredibly fascinating and I loved the classic ‘who done it?’ situation revolving around Simon’s death.

However, the book had you leading up to finding out who the killer was for long, that finding out that it was a suicide took away a bit of the eerie factor. This is not to say that I don’t take suicide and depression seriously and I understand those are very, very serious things. I was just expecting to find out that, say, Browyn had killed Simon because she was tired of him writing gossip about her peers, and, possibly her.

Overall this was a great read and I’m excited to buy the sequel for myself.

Some other awesome books I’d recommend are: Made You Up by Francesca Zappia Eliza and her Monsters by Francesca Zappia The Divergent Series by Veronica Roth The Percy Jackson & Heroes of Olympus Series by Rick Riordan

Book Review: “One of Us is Lying” by Karen McManus

When you think of a murder mystery novel, what's the first thing that comes to mind? For some, it might be an old Agatha Christie volume -- the kind of paperback you see on your grandmother's bookshelf that's dusty and looks like it hasn't been read for years. Others might recall memories of reading classic Sherlock Holmes tales in high school (and writing the three-page essay that likely followed). Thankfully, Karen McManus has written a story both for people who love a good whodunnit and for those who might not be as familiar with the genre; this story is her debut novel, “One of Us is Lying,” and it is all at once enthralling, exciting and enticing. 

The intrigue begins with a gossip app created by Simon, one of the students at the local high school. Everyone reads it, but nobody particularly likes it -- especially when they are the ones who end up in that week's feature story. When Simon dies suddenly in the middle of detention surrounded by four of the most well-known kids in school, suspicions begin to arise; those four students were the only ones surrounding Simon in his final moments, but none of them will admit to the killing, and each one suspects the other. 

“One of Us is Lying” never has a moment of downtime. Karen McManus leads her readers to suspect first one person and then the next, and the investigation becomes more complex and intriguing as different chapters of the book are narrated by each of the four main characters. She tops off this perfect mix with a romance side-plot that combines readers' intellectual involvement with their emotional involvement. 

Ultimately, McManus’s debut novel is a stunningly intricate story. Readers who love “One of Us is Lying” may also be interested in its sequel, “One of Us is Next,” which was released on Jan. 7. 

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Review: One of Us Is Lying by Karen McManus

One of Us Is Lying Karen McManus Delacorte Press Published May 30, 2017

Amazon | bookshop | goodreads, about one of us is lying.

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.

My Review for One of Us is Lying

This is definitely the kind of story that keeps you turning pages late into the night. Every chapter hints at and slowly reveals new secrets that change what you know about each character in the room with Simon when he dies.

I liked that each character had a lot more going on than it originally appeared, and each is a lot deeper than her classmates initially perceive her to be. I liked each of the characters a lot, especially as I got to know them.

Throughout the story, important clues come from surprising places, which again kept me guessing. There was a point at which I thought I had the plot figured out and was pretty close. Honestly, by then, I was so invested in the story and so curious as to what would happen to the truly innocent parties, that I didn’t care if I turned out to be right.

If you’re a fan of the cult classic The Breakfast Club or murder mysteries in general, you need to add this one to your summer reading list. If you’re like me, once you read the first chapter, you won’t be able to put it down.

The series continues with One of Us Is Next , out in early 2022.

Content Notes for One of Us is Lying

Recommended for Ages 14 up.

Representation Bronwyn and her sister are half-Latino. One character comes out as gay midway through the story.

Profanity/Crude Language Content Extreme profanity used with moderate frequency.

Romance/Sexual Content Addy’s mother teaches her that the only way to keep a man is to keep him sexually satisfied. She and her boyfriend make out on her bed, and it’s clear she means to have sex with him. Through the course of the story, she begins to question her mom’s advice and eventually decides to take a break from dating and be herself.

Some kisses are exchanged between boy and girl or between two boys.

Spiritual Content None.

Violent Content A boy goes into anaphylactic shock and dies.

Drug Content Nate sells drugs to pay the bills his father ignores. After Simon’s death, he stops, knowing the police investigation puts him at too great a risk of getting caught. Eventually he finds other reasons not to pick the habit up again.

Note: This post contains affiliate links, which do not cost you anything to use, but which help support this blog. I received a free copy of ONE OF US IS LYING in exchange for my honest review.

Read the Next Book in the Series

One of Us Is Next by Karen McManus

Amazon  |  Bookshop  |  Goodreads | My Review

The highly anticipated sequel to the New York Times bestselling thriller everyone is talking about, One of Us Is Lying! There’s a new mystery to solve at Bayview High, and there’s a whole new set of rules.

Bronwyn’s younger sister, Maeve, and her best friend/ex-boyfriend, Knox, and their friend Phoebe become targets of the next gossip attack. Appearances from the original Bayview Four.

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About Kasey

3 responses to review: one of us is lying by karen mcmanus.

Thank you for this great review. I have read a lot of YA and have been able to recommend appropriate books (no sex and low romance) to my bookworm 12-year old. But she has outpaced me and I have run out of books to recommend. Thank you for your thorough review and including Romance/sexual content in your assessment. I think I may hold off for a year for her. But sounds like a great read for me. It will certainly help me prepare to have conversations with her regarding the topics in this book. Thank you agsin.

Thanks, Linda! My daughter is twelve also, so I know what you mean. It’s tough to find things with the right balance! You might try THE WONDER OF US by Kim Colbertson or THE DISAPPEARANCES by Emily Bain Murphy. You can find both reviews on the blog. They have some romance (no sex) but it’s not the focus of either story. 🙂

Oh man, how you piqued my interest!!!

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Book review: ‘One of Us is Lying’ by Karen M. McManus

Student dies in detention from anaphylactic shock; investigation begins to see who killed Simon

COURTESY OF ONE OF US IS LYING

“One of Us is Lying” offers readers a thrilling mystery with a twist at the end.

CALLIE GERBER , Evergreen reporter December 1, 2021

Warning! This review contains spoilers about “One of Us is Lying.”

I often struggle to find books I truly enjoy. They either have too much action and not enough character development, making it so that I don’t care about the characters, or the other way around. “One of Us is Lying” kept me engaged from the first chapter to the very end and I cared about the characters.

The book started with five students in detention at Bayview High School. One of the students, Simon, got a cup of water from the back of the room. As he drank it, Simon went into anaphylactic shock from a peanut allergy. His epi pen wasn’t in his backpack and there weren’t any at the nurse’s office. The paramedics took him to the hospital, but he didn’t survive. 

There were four other students in the room at the time of the incident making them the main suspects of Simon’s death. The rest of the book was from the perspective of the four students as the homicide investigation happened.

One aspect I didn’t like about this book is how some parts were unrealistic. Simon created the “About That” app, which had information about who cheated with who, when someone was in the closet and other secrets people didn’t want their peers to know.

Although the book did mention Bayview’s principal is a big advocate for free speech, most schools would try to get an app like that shut down because it’s a severe distraction to the learning environment. The school administration wasn’t doing anything about the app though, and that just isn’t realistic in the real world.

One of my favorite parts about this book is how deep the character development is. Two of the characters who were in detention, Bronwyn and Nate, are the complete opposite of each other.

Bronwyn has amazing grades, is involved in many extraccuriculars and applied to Ivy League schools. Nate comes from a family where his dad struggles with substance abuse. His mom left and he makes money by selling drugs.

Nate offers Bronwyn a ride home on his motorcycle, which she reluctantly accepts, after detention on the day Simon died. As time went on, she began to enjoy Nate and their characters began to get closer.

With their lawyer’s guidance, the four students weren’t supposed to interact, text or hang out with each other. Nate gave Bronwyn a burner phone so they could talk and plan times to secretly meet up. When Nate got arrested for probable cause, Bronwyn found a pro bono lawyer to fight for Nate to get him out of custody. Toward the end of the book, they become a couple.

The book discussed important everyday topics most teenagers can relate to. One of the four students in detention, Cooper, was in the closet. He started dating a man named Kris when the investigators found a draft post on “About That” regarding Cooper’s sexuality that was supposed to be published, but never was.

The investigators had a conversation with Cooper about it and then he was outed to the whole school. During this time, he also told his family. Cooper’s father is homophobic and was very awkward toward Cooper for a while. Readers were able to see how Cooper navigated his father’s disapproval. This was a real-world topic many can sympathize with.

I believe a good book should evoke emotion from you in the end. “One of Us is Lying” did just that. The character development, action, important and relevant themes and the ending make this one of my favorite books.

Rating: 9/10 

• book review
• one of us is lying

Callie Gerber is a freshman neuroscience major from Renton, Washington. She started at The Daily Evergreen as a news reporter in fall 2021.

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Book Review

One of us is lying.

• Karen M. McManus
• Mystery , Romance

Readability Age Range

• Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC
• American Library Association’s YALSA Quick Pick Selection 2018

Year Published

One of Us Is Lying by Karen M. McManus has been reviewed by Focus on the Family’s marriage and parenting [magazine] (https://store.focusonthefamily.com/goaa-thriving “magazine”).

Plot Summary

Bronwyn Rojas, Addy Prentiss, Nate Macauley, Cooper Clay and Simon Kelleher, students at Bayview High, are in detention together. Mr. Avery doesn’t allow phones in his classroom, and he found cellphones in their backpacks. Bronwyn tells Mr. Avery that the phone he found isn’t hers, and when the others admit to having phones planted in their bags as well, they realize they have been set up.

In the group, Bronwyn is considered the brain, Addy the beauty queen, Nate the troublemaker and Cooper the athlete. Simon is the creator of About That, a gossip app set up for their school. Simon’s knack at finding and posting the truth about secrets causes others to fear and hate him. In detention, Simon remarks that their group consists of walking teen movie stereotypes, and he considers himself the omniscient narrator.

The group hears a car accident in the parking lot, and Mr. Avery leaves to investigate. When the students go to the window to look, Simon drinks a cup of water and has a severe allergic reaction. Nate frantically searches for Simon’s EpiPen. When he can’t find it, he sends Cooper to the clinic to get one, but the EpiPens have all been removed. The ambulance arrives, but it’s too late to save Simon.

The four students are emotionally shaken from the experience. Most of them had known Simon for years, and while they were afraid of him or disliked him, they are rattled from seeing a person die firsthand. Nate offers Bronwyn a ride home on his motorcycle, and Cooper takes an emotional Addy to her longtime boyfriend, Jake.

The police investigation uncovers that the cup Simon drank from was laced with peanut oil. Since the four students in detention with him had access to the cup, Bronwyn, Addy, Nate and Cooper become the main suspects. The police also discover an unpublished About That entry that features rumors about the four students. The post accuses Addy of cheating on Jake; Bronwyn of cheating to pass a class; Nate of dealing drugs, even though he is on probation; and Cooper of using performance-enhancing steroids. The entry casts more suspicion on the four, and soon, not only is the local media reporting the story, but the national media, too.

Addy is terrified of Jake finding out that she cheated on him through the About That post, so she tells him herself. Jake is furious and breaks up with her. At school, their shared group of friends (except for Cooper) treats her poorly.

Bronwyn, who wants to attend Yale, as her parents did, fears that her cheating will be discovered and her dreams for college will be shattered. She tells her parents. They hire an attorney and tell her not to speak with the other suspects. Bronwyn ignores this warning, as she is growing closer to Nate.

Nate has been dealing painkillers, but quickly gets rid of his stash before the police search his house. Cooper has been terrified of Simon eventually finding out his secret. He is relieved by what was revealed in the unpublished post, even though it means that college baseball scouts are suspicious of his talent. Cooper isn’t using steroids; his real secret is that he is gay and cheating on his girlfriend with a college-aged male model.

It isn’t long before the police discover that the unpublished entry was edited, and Cooper’s secret relationship is brought to light. Cooper becomes ostracized in school and at home. As police and public suspicion increase, the four students begin secretly getting together to compare notes, hoping to clear their names.

Nate, who has a criminal record and is thought to be a troublemaker, is soon arrested for Simon’s murder. After an anonymous tip, Nate’s school locker is searched for a second time and Simon’s EpiPen, along with all the missing EpiPens from the nurse’s office, are found inside. Bronwyn believes Nate is being framed and persuades a high-profile lawyer to take his case. Bronwyn, Addy and Cooper continue their own investigation, which leads them to Simon’s best friend, Janae Vargas.

Addy visits Janae and learns that Simon wasn’t murdered — he committed suicide. Simon planned his death, from the peanut oil in the cup, to the car accident in the parking lot to distract the teacher. Simon was depressed and wanted to die, but he also wanted to punish the four students he believed slighted him in the past: Bronwyn for giving him a wrong due date for an important project, making him miss the deadline; Nate for taking the attention of a girl Simon liked; and Cooper for having Simon blacklisted from an after-prom party. Addy was targeted just because she cheated on Jake.

Janae tells Addy that Simon rigged the votes so he would be on the junior prom court, and Jake found out. While Simon mocked people for wanting to be popular, he wanted it for himself and was embarrassed to be found out. Simon knew that Addy cheated on Jake, so he used that information to ally with Jake. Simon planned to commit suicide and frame the other four students.

Jake went along with the plan because Jake wanted to pin the murder on Addy, to punish her for what she did. Jake had enough incriminating evidence on Janae to force her to go along with his plan, but Janae liked Addy and planted the evidence in Nate’s locker instead.

While Addy is at Janae’s house, Jake comes over. Addy tries to hide and secretly record Jake, but he finds her and tries to kill her. Cooper arrives and stops the assault. Nate is freed, and Jake is charged with assault, obstructing justice and tampering with evidence.

After Nate is freed, Bronwyn tries to pursue a romantic relationship with him, but he doesn’t feel as if he’s good enough for her. They break up but eventually reunite. Addy moves out of her mother’s house and moves in with her older sister. Cooper and his boyfriend, Kris, date openly.

Christian Beliefs

As children, Bronwyn and Nate attended Catholic school.

Other Belief Systems

Authority roles.

Addy’s mother is critical of her daughters, stressing the importance of their looks and ability to attract and keep the kind of man who can take care of them for life. Addy turns to her older sister, Ashton, when she needs support.

Nate’s father is an alcoholic who spends days in a drunken stupor, leaving his son to pay the bills and take care of himself. As a result, Nate sells drugs to support the household. Nate’s probation officer is supportive and encourages him to attend school regularly. Nate’s mother was an addict who abandoned their family for a cult. Nate lies to everyone that she is dead. After years of being absent, she goes to rehab and returns sober. She is there to support Nate after he is accused and arrested for murder.

Bronwyn’s parents are very successful and have high academic and moral expectations of her. They are disappointed with her after she admits to cheating. Cooper’s family has made sacrifices for him to play baseball, with the hope that he will be recruited to a top university and eventually play professionally. After the truth is revealed that Cooper is gay, his father is angry, feeling that Cooper has sabotaged everything that they have worked for, including college scholarships. He barely speaks to Cooper after Cooper comes out.

Jake’s mother cheated on his father. Both father and son are very controlling in their relationships.

Profanity & Violence

Profanity and name-calling include the f-word, s— , a– , b–ch , whore , slut , fag and douchbag . The name of Jesus is used alone and with Christ . God’s name is use with d–n , oh , thank and my .

Four students see Simon having a severe allergic reaction, and despite Nate performing CPR, Simon dies. Later, it is revealed that Simon planned his own suicide. After Addy tells Jake that she cheated on him, he angrily punches holes into a wall with his fist. His blood is depicted.

TJ, the boy Addy slept with, sports a black eye and swollen nose after Jake confronts him. Jake pursues Addy through the woods, trips her, beats her and tries to strangle her before Cooper catches up to them and punches Jake.

Sexual Content

Simon Kelleher’s gossip app reports on sex tapes, pregnancy scares and cheating scandals about Bayview High students. One of Simon’s posts featured a girl, Leah, who slept with a freshman. She was harassed on social media and tried to commit suicide by slitting her wrist. He wrote another post about a boy, Aiden, who secretly dressed in women’s clothes.

Addy’s divorcee mother dates a string of increasingly younger men and openly flirts with both adult men and high school boys. She tells Addy how lucky she is that a handsome, popular boy like Jake is interested in her and that Addy should hold on to him by any means necessary. Addy’s older sister, Ashton, is in a bad marriage and eventually leaves her husband when she walks in on him having sex with another woman.

Addy and Jake had been dating since they were 14 years old. He was the only boy she ever dated and had lost her virginity to him. Addy, feeling insecure about her relationship with Jake, that she wasn’t good enough and would eventually lose him, got drunk and had sex with another boy while Jake was away on summer vacation.

Simon told Jake that Addy cheated on him, but Jake continued their romantic relationship for months, continuing to have sex with Addy, while plotting his revenge. After they break up, Addy has a hard time adjusting to life outside of Jake’s control. She also loses her friends, one of whom tries to seduce Jake.

Nate has a series of casual sexual encounters with girls whom he meets at parties. He stops after he and Bronwyn become friends. He and Bronwyn have romantic feelings for each other and kiss. They break up after Nate is released from jail. Bronwyn briefly dates and kisses another boy, but eventually she and Nate reunite.

Cooper is dating Keely, one of the most beautiful and popular girls in school, but he secretly in love with Kris, a college-aged boy. When Cooper goes to see Kris, they kiss passionately. Cooper breaks up with Keely, and after his relationship with Kris is made public by the media, they kiss and hold hands openly. The host of an investigative TV show is outraged that the police outed Cooper, as the host was outed without his consent years before.

Discussion Topics

Additional comments.

Alcohol and drugs: Characters drink alcohol, and Nate deals painkillers.

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Book Review: One of Us Is Lying

Karen McManus’ debut novel One of Us is Lying has been advertised as part Pretty Little Liars and part The Breakfast Club .  I’d say those comparisons are spot on, but I’d also add in a dash of Gossip Girl to give a more complete picture of what this book is about.

As the novel begins, it is immediately reminiscent of The Breakfast Club .  Five high school students who don’t typically hang out or know each other all that well end up in after school detention together.  There’s Addy, the beautiful homecoming princess-type; Cooper, the superstar athlete; Bronwyn, the Yale-bound goodie two shoes; Nate, a delinquent who is already on probation for dealing drugs; and finally there’s Simon, who is somewhat of an outcast but also the creator of a gossip app that all of their fellow students are obsessed with (Cue the Gossip Girl comparison). No one was sure how he did it, but Simon always managed to dig up the juiciest bits of gossip about his fellow classmates and made it his business to expose anyone and everyone.

Where the comparison to The Breakfast Club basically ends is that instead of this “Breakfast Club” ending up with these seemingly different students bonding and becoming friends, this detention ends up in death.  Something happens and Simon dies in the classroom.  At first it appears to be a tragic accident, but once the police start investigating, it becomes clear that Simon’s death was not an accident.  An as yet-unpublished draft for his gossip app indicates that Simon was about to post some seriously juicy gossip about Addy, Bronwyn, Nate, and Cooper, which bumps them up to the top of the list of prime suspects.  The central question at this point becomes: How far will someone go to protect their secret? Murder?  (And cue up the Pretty Little Liars comparison).

Okay, so I have to admit that both Gossip Girl and Pretty Little Liars are guilty pleasure shows for me.  I binge watched both of them and am disappointed that both series have ended. So when I heard about this book, I knew I just had to read it.  I love a good thriller/mystery anyway, but this just sounded perfect for me.

I think what I enjoyed the most about the novel was exactly what I loved about those two shows – the thrilling pace,  the endless twists and turns, and  never knowing from one moment to the next who’s going to be on the hot seat . What do I mean?  Well, let’s just say there’s someone out there behind the scenes who is pulling the strings of the investigation and making each one of the main suspects look guilty as hell. Everyone’s heads are spinning, including mine, trying to figure out if one of the four students who were in detention are actually guilty or if they are just pawns in a sick game and the real murderer is still out there somewhere.  I was already thoroughly engrossed in the story as soon as it was revealed that Simon was dead, but the added tension of someone possibly trying to frame these kids for murder made it so I literally could not put this book down until I knew the truth about what had happened .

Although this book is mainly about solving the mystery, there is some great character development in it.  Of the four main suspects, Addy was by far my favorite character .  At first she’s just this pretty shell of a girl who dresses the way her boyfriend wants her to, goes where he wants her to, and is more of an extension of him than she is her own person.  Simon’s death, the ensuing investigation, and all that comes out really changes her though and she becomes downright badass by about the midway point of the book.  When the police investigation just seems to keep going in circles that are being drawn by the puppet master behind the scenes, Addy is one of the main ones to take matters into her own hands to try figure out who the real killer is.

DISLIKES/ISSUES:

My biggest issue with One of Us is Lying is that there’s not enough distinction between the different characters’ voices. The story unfolds from the viewpoint of the four accused teens and is told in alternating chapters from each of them.  However, no matter whose perspective a chapter was coming from, I found myself having to flip back and see whose name was at the beginning of the chapter.  And that wasn’t just happening early on in the book as I was getting to know the characters. It happened pretty consistently throughout the book and was a little frustrating since I wanted to plow through the book to find out who was responsible for Simon’s death and didn’t want to keep backtracking.

FINAL THOUGHTS

I think whether or not you would enjoy this book depends on how much you enjoy entertainment along the lines of Pretty Little Liars and Gossip Girl since One of Us is Lying does play on so many of the same themes and types of characters and contains similar drama.  If those aren’t your cup of tea, this book may not be for you.

RATING:  3.5 STARS

GOODREADS SYNOPSIS One of Us Is Lying  is the story of what happens when five strangers walk into detention and only four walk out alive. Everyone is a suspect, and everyone has something to hide. 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.

About Karen M. McManus

Karen M. McManus earned her BA in English from the College of the Holy Cross and her MA in journalism from Northeastern University. Her debut young adult novel, ONE OF US IS LYING, will be released from Delacorte Press/Random House on May 30, 2017. It will also be published internationally in 18 territories including the United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, The Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Indonesia, Brazil, Turkey, Russia, Poland, the Czech Republic, Romania, Serbia, and Slovakia.

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tbh I’m skimming this review bc I’m curious about this novel but think I want to go in kinda blind. Your final thoughts make me think I’ll enjoy this as a guilty pleasure read!

Yeah, I think the less you know, the better. Plot-wise I tried not to expand much beyond the Goodreads blurb, but I think the plot becomes even more full of twists and turns if you don’t even read that before jumping in. I hope you enjoy it!

It seems like everyone is reading this book lately. I don’t know why it doesn’t grab me. Maybe because I’m not into the Gossip Girl type shows. Maybe eventually I’ll give it a try.

It does seem like everyone is reading this book right now. We must have all gotten our reserve library books at the same time, haha. Yeah, I would say that if you’re not into those Gossip Girl/Pretty Little Liar shows, this could be a struggle to get into. It’s a good mystery, but there’s a lot of drama too. This was a guilty pleasure read for me.

It can be difficult to know who is speaking with so many point of views, but overall, this sounds great. It’s one I hope to read soon!

Yeah, even with that issue, it’s still a really fun read, especially if you enjoy what I call guilty pleasure drama.

Oooh, interesting, someone is behind the scenes? I did not realise that — great review, Suzanne, I think you’ve just piqued my interest even more!

Yeah, I think the person behind the scenes adds a whole new layer to the story since that person keeps manipulating the evidence. Figuring out who that mystery person is becomes a mystery within the mystery, so to speak.

Oh, I remember Greg reviewing this one and it made me want to read it. I have to admit that I haven’t watched PLL or GG, but they’re up there on my ‘one-day-when-I-have-time-to-watch-TV-again’ list.

I love that the book seems so engrossing and that it manages to incorporate some character development too.

It’s a little sad though that none of the voices were distinctive and I think that would frustrate me too.

Overall I do still want to read this one and I think it will be enjoyable!

Great review as always Suzanne!

Yeah, even with the issue I had with the voices, I still think it was a quick and exciting read, especially if you’re in the mood for some drama and lots of twists and turns.

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Book Summary: One Of Us is Lying by Karen M. McManus

(High School Level)

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Introduction

‘One of Us is Lying’ is a young adult novel written by Karen M. McManus and published in 2017. The book became a New York Times bestseller and was adapted into a television series in 2021. The story follows four high school students who are suspected of murdering their classmate, Simon, during detention. The novel explores themes of trust, betrayal, and the consequences of actions. This review argues that ‘One of Us is Lying’ is a well-written and engaging novel that uses compelling characters and plot twists to keep readers invested until the very end.

The novel centers on five high school students who are in detention: Bronwyn, the brainiac; Nate, the criminal; Cooper, the athlete; Addy, the popular girl; and Simon, the outcast who runs a gossip app that exposes the secrets of his classmates. During detention, Simon collapses and dies from an allergic reaction to peanuts. It is later revealed that his water bottle was laced with peanut oil. The four remaining students become the prime suspects in his murder investigation. As the story unfolds, each character’s secrets and motives are exposed, and the truth about Simon’s death is revealed.

Important themes in the book include the danger of secrets, the power of social media, and the importance of trust and communication in relationships.

One of the strengths of ‘One of Us is Lying’ is the way that McManus creates complex and compelling characters. Each of the four suspects has a unique backstory and motivation for wanting Simon dead. The story is told from the perspective of all four characters, giving readers a deep understanding of their thoughts and emotions. The use of multiple perspectives also adds to the tension of the story, as readers are left wondering who is telling the truth and who is lying.

Another strength of the book is the use of plot twists and turns to keep readers engaged. Just when readers think they have the mystery solved, a new piece of evidence or revelation is introduced that changes everything. The pacing of the story is well-done, with just the right amount of tension and suspense to keep readers hooked.

The book also uses literary devices such as foreshadowing and symbolism to add depth to the story. The use of Simon’s gossip app as a metaphor for the power of social media is particularly effective, highlighting the way that information can be used to manipulate and control others.

In terms of weaknesses, some readers may find the story predictable or formulaic. The use of multiple perspectives and plot twists is a common device in young adult literature, and some readers may feel that ‘One of Us is Lying’ follows this formula too closely. Additionally, some of the characters’ motivations may feel forced or contrived.

However, overall, ‘One of Us is Lying’ is a well-written and engaging novel that explores important themes and uses literary techniques to add depth to the story.

Readers who enjoy young adult mystery novels with compelling characters and plot twists will likely enjoy ‘One of Us is Lying’. The book is a great choice for high school students, particularly those interested in exploring themes of trust, betrayal, and the power of social media.

In terms of comparison to other works in the genre, ‘One of Us is Lying’ is similar to other young adult mystery novels such as ‘Gone Girl’ by Gillian Flynn and ‘Pretty Little Liars’ by Sara Shepard. However, the use of multiple perspectives and the exploration of social media as a tool for manipulation sets ‘One of Us is Lying’ apart from these other works.

Overall, ‘One of Us is Lying’ is a well-crafted and engaging novel that is worth reading.

Possible questions for a high school test:

• Who are the four suspects in Simon’s murder investigation?
• What is the metaphor used in the book for the power of social media?
• What are some important themes explored in the book?
• The four suspects are Bronwyn, Nate, Cooper, and Addy.
• Simon’s gossip app is used as a metaphor for the power of social media.
• Some important themes explored in the book include the danger of secrets, the power of social media, and the importance of trust and communication in relationships.
• Kirkus Reviews. (2017, May 1). One of Us Is Lying by Karen M. McManus. Kirkus Reviews . https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/karen-m-mcmanus/one-of-us-is-lying/
• McManus, K. M. (2017). One of Us Is Lying . Delacorte Press.

Awards and Accolades

‘One of Us is Lying’ has received numerous awards and accolades, including:

• New York Times bestseller
• Goodreads Choice Award for Young Adult Fiction (2017)
• ALA-YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults (2018)
• Edgar Award Nominee for Best Young Adult (2018)
• Bram Stoker Award Nominee for Young Adult Novel (2017)

Book Details

• ISBN: 9781524714680
• Number of pages: 368
• Publisher name: Delacorte Press
• First publish date: May 30, 2017
• Has it been made into a movie, TV, or other streaming format? Yes, the book was adapted into a television series.

Other Reviews

Here are some other reviews of ‘One of Us is Lying’:

• Publishers Weekly: https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-1-5247-1468-0
• School Library Journal: https://www.slj.com/?reviewDetail=one-of-us-is-lying

Where to Buy the Book

To purchase ‘One of Us is Lying’, visit: https://bookshop.org/a/1289/9781524714680

Is this Book Part of a Series?  ‘One of Us is Lying’ is the first book in a duology. The second book, ‘One of Us is Next’, was published in 2020. To purchase the series, visit: https://bookshop.org/a/1289/9780593178751 

About the Author

Karen M. McManus is a young adult author known for her mystery novels. She was born in Massachusetts and studied English at College of the Holy Cross and later earned a Master’s degree in Journalism from Northeastern University. In addition to ‘One of Us is Lying’, McManus is also the author of ‘Two Can Keep a Secret’ and ‘The Cousins’. She has been nominated for several awards for her writing, including the Edgar Award and the Goodreads Choice Award.

Book Review: One of Us is Lying

"One of Us Is Lying" by Karen M. McManus is an addictive blend of suspense, secrets, and teenage drama. McManus crafts a gripping narrative filled with twists and turns that kept me hooked from start to finish. The characters are multi-dimensional, each with their own motivations and secrets, making it impossible to trust anyone completely. The story unfolds through multiple perspectives, allowing for a deeper exploration of each character's psyche and adding layers of complexity to the mystery. McManus's writing is sharp and atmospheric, creating a palpable sense of tension that lingers throughout the novel. As the plot unravels, the stakes escalate, leading to a thrilling conclusion that will leave readers on the edge of their seats. "One of Us Is Lying" is a must-read for fans of suspenseful thrillers with a compelling cast of characters.

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Review: ‘One of Us is Lying’ by Karen M. McManus is a thrilling mystery novel

Sure, classic mystery books are written fantastically. Every book in the Sherlock Holmes series has a genius plot. But for me, it takes a couple of reads and some SparkNotes explanations to fully understand the plot of all of Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories. His books are just a little easier to follow than Shakespeare’s plays. I obviously won’t enjoy a story I don’t understand. And if I don’t understand the story, I’ll surely become bored of it.

Modern mystery books, however, are just as intriguing as classics, and easier to comprehend to boot. “ One of Us is Lying ,” a book written by Karen M. McManus , is about five Bayview High School students who get stuck in detention with each other. However, only four of them walk out alive.

The four students who were in the classroom with Simon, the victim, are immediately the prime suspects of the murder case. Throughout the story, the four students, Bronwyn, Cooper, Addy and Nate, try to figure out who murdered Simon Kelleher, while trying to clear their own names.

When I first began reading this story, the first thing I noticed was how long it has been since I read a physical book. As I continued reading, the second thing I noticed was that I was actually getting immersed in the story. Because of the coronavirus, I’ve been scrolling through social media rather than sticking my head in a book. This was the first book that I’ve read in a while that I’ve actually enjoyed.

The book isn’t very long, and the story isn’t cliche, so you automatically want to continue reading to find out who committed the crime. It’s not a book where you can immediately guess who the murderer is; McManus keeps you guessing until the very end.

“One of Us is Lying” has a unique format. The story is told without a narrator, but rather it is told through the eyes of the four murder suspects. Through each of the character’s perspectives, we get to know their personalities better and get a glance at their personal lives as well.

The plot is unpredictable. McManus keeps readers on the tips of their toes throughout the story. One moment I was suspecting one student, the next chapter I was suspecting another, and then I just didn’t know anymore.

This story also highlights how people tend to conform to society’s expectations, and how you’re judged for being yourself. It portrays the imperfections of life, and how things aren’t always going to unfold the way you want them to. It’s realistic, and it makes readers sympathize with the characters. It’s especially relatable for high schoolers since the main characters in the book are in high school.

The book is full of twists and turns, but the bumpy roads of the Bayview four’s lives eventually smooth themselves out. Although the characters have many conflicts throughout the story, they resolve them and everyone gets the closure they deserve at the end.

All in all, “ One of Us is Lying” is a wonderfully written book with a creative plot. There are very few books that can keep me from continuously glancing over at the clock, and this one was so engaging, it really made me lose track of time. If you want a book that’s exciting, but not too tedious to read, “ One of Us is Lying” is definitely a book you should check out.

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Here, we chat about our favorite (and sometimes least favorite) books, share recommendations on everything from what wine pairs best with that work of fiction to facemasks that make your non-fiction read even better, and live our best basic bookworm lives.

Aug 24 Books Review: "One of Us is Lying" and "One of is Next" by Karen McManus

“One of Us is Lying” and “One of Us is Next” by Karen McManus

Synopses: 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. 

Come on, Bayview, you know you've missed this.

A ton of copycat gossip apps have popped up since Simon died, but in the year since the Bayview four were cleared of his shocking death, no one's been able to fill the gossip void quite like he could. The problem is no one has the facts.  Until now.  This time it's not an app, though—it's a game.  Truth or Dare. Phoebe 's the first target. If you choose not to play, it's a truth. And hers is dark. Then comes  Maeve  and she should know better—always choose the dare. But by the time  Knox  is about to be tagged, things have gotten dangerous. The dares have become deadly, and if Maeve learned anything from Bronwyn last year, it's that they can't count on the police for help. Or protection. Simon's gone, but someone's determined to keep his legacy at Bayview High alive. And this time, there's a whole new set of rules.  - Delacorte Press

Rating (out of 5): 4 (“Lying”) and 3.75 (“Next”)

Review: I’m going to attempt to do a two-book review today, mostly because I’ve read both of these books in the past two weeks, and it just felt right. I had never read “One of Us is Lying,” and when I saw that the sequel was about to come out, it seemed like a perfect quarantine read. I enjoyed both of these books — the first slightly more than the second, only because the central mystery was more engaging — and I feel like they are a great escape right now, even if there’s a bit of murder.

Every time I read a YA book like this, I think about two things: one, my high school experience was so comparatively boring, and two, no one actually had this high school experience. I am so glad that I was able to get through my formative years without social media, and while I wasn’t outwardly bullied, middle and high school weren’t a peak time for me. I cannot imagine going to school and having to wonder if every misstep would be fodder for a text or a TikTok recreation, and I feel bad for Gen Z for having to live through that. The author, who I assume is closer to my age than high school, accurately captured that feeling of fear and urgency in a way that made Bayview High feel both real and suspenseful.

Are these the most realistic books I’ve read? Nope.

Did I guess some of the twists and turns? Sure.

Do I think that this book touches on some of the really big issues facing teens today — peer pressure, social media, bullying — and turn them on their head? Absolutely.

Am I recommending this series to you if you like the following: teen melodrama, kids behaving badly, parents who serve little-to-no plot purpose? Heck yes.

I found the first of these two books to be the stronger of the series, but I still enjoyed the second — which really dealt with the “next generation” of kids at Bayview High. Both stories were clever and well-written, with well-drawn main characters and a good central mystery.

TL;DR: A fun and fast diversion — combining some of the best aspects of “The Breakfast Club,” “Gossip Girl” and “How to Get Away with Murder” into a compulsively readable series.

If You Liked This, Try These:

“A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder” by Holly Jackson - Bookshop | Kindle (my review here !)

“The Cheerleaders” by Kara Thomas - Bookshop | Kindle

“They Wish They Were Us” by Jessica Goodman - Bookshop | Kindle (my review here! )

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One of Us Is Lying

• Study Guide

Karen M. McManus

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One of Us Is Lying Full Book Summary

Simon Kelleher has a particular talent for uncovering the secrets of his fellow students at Bayview High School. He uses a gossip app he created called About That to spread these secrets as well as rumors and nasty comments about his peers.

One September afternoon, Simon and four other seniors find themselves in detention. Addy Prentiss, Bronwyn Rojas, and Cooper Clay are rarely mentioned on Simon’s app, but Nate Macauley, who is often in trouble and who sleeps with a lot of girls, appears frequently. A teacher, Mr. Avery, has given all five students detention for having their cell phones in class—phones which they all claim were planted. When a car crash occurs outside, Mr. Avery leaves to go make sure no one was hurt. Moments later, Simon takes a drink of water and collapses almost instantly. After a frantic search for an EpiPen comes up empty, Simon is taken away by paramedics and soon is later pronounced dead.

Addy and her boyfriend, Jake, are friends with Cooper and his girlfriend, Keely. Bronwyn, whom Nate has known since kindergarten, has been an overachiever ever since her younger sister, Maeve, survived leukemia. Speculation about Simon’s death quickly takes over Bayview High School as the police seem to be treating it as not having been an accident. The four students who were in detention with Simon are approached by the police when someone makes an online post claiming to be Simon’s murderer. The police also discover unpublished About That content queued up by Simon implying that Addy, Bronwyn, Cooper, and Nate each has a secret to hide. The police believe that each benefited from Simon’s death because that prevented these rumors from being posted.

Jake and Addy have been together since their freshman year, but Addy fears what will happen when Jake finds out that she had sex with someone else last year. That is her secret.

Although generally a top student, Bronwyn once stole chemistry exam answers off her teacher’s computer. She fears what will happen if this becomes public knowledge. The police also confront Bronwyn with an old About That post. Simon wrote a humiliating account of her sister Maeve’s first high school party and made light of her bout with cancer, which obviously angered Bronwyn.

Cooper is a pitcher with a bright future playing baseball, has a popular girlfriend, and is widely liked. The rumor Simon had queued up, that Cooper used steroids, is untrue. However, the police discover a file Simon had encrypted, containing another rumor about Cooper, and this one actually is true. Despite protests from Cooper’s lawyer, Cooper is pressured into revealing his secret to his family: he is gay, and he has been cheating on Keely with a guy named Kris. 

As the only member of the Bayview Four with a criminal record, Nate seems to be the leading suspect in Simon’s murder. Nate has always had feelings for Bronwyn, feelings that seem to be mutual as they grow closer during the investigation into Simon’s death. However, Nate worries that Bronwyn just sees him as a project she can manage. Nate was known to have used and sold drugs in the past, and Simon’s unpublished post alleges that he is doing so again—which is, in fact, true. But since Simon’s death and the events following it, Nate has walked away from selling and taking drugs—at least partly because he knows that Bronwyn deserves someone whose life is less complicated. 

When the police seem focused only on pinning Simon’s death on one or more of the “Bayview Four,” Maeve begins an investigation of Simon on her own, and shares what she finds with her sister Bronwyn. Maeve is able to access Simon’s About That admin page and she also looks into Simon’s past. Maeve discovers some unsettling information about Simon, including some terrible comments he wrote and posted after a nearby school shooting. In spite of their lawyers and parents discouraging the Bayview Four from speaking with each other, they agree to work together as the investigation intensifies. Aided by Ashton and Maeve, they continue to dig into Simon’s past. 

After Addy reaches out to Janae, Simon’s only friend, Janae starts spending time with Addy and Bronwyn. Addy finally confesses to Jake that she had cheated on him, and she is bullied and ostracized at school by her former friends—who, it turns out, were just Jake’s friends and not hers. However, she finds new freedom once she is outside Jake’s influence. After Cooper tells his parents about Kris, he confides in Addy, as well. Nate comes to Cooper’s defense when the school learns that Cooper is gay. By now, everyone’s secret is out, and each of the four is increasingly intent on finding Simon’s real killer so they can move forward with their lives.

For Addy and Cooper, the urgency briefly lessens when Nate is arrested. Acting on an anonymous tip, the police have discovered incriminating items in Nate’s possession, including Simon’s EpiPen and water bottle. Nate’s fingerprints don’t appear on any of the items, however. Bronwyn enlists Addy and Cooper to help clear Nate, as well as a pro bono lawyer named Eli Kleinfelter. Since she is deeply involved in the investigation, Bronwyn has been warned not to contact Eli, who has officially taken on Nate’s case, so she feeds Eli information through Ashton. When the Bayview Four discover that Simon hired someone to stage the car crash, they conclude that Simon orchestrated his own death. However, the group don’t believe that Simon acted alone. Simon must have had an accomplice: whoever has been posting anonymously about the case.

Jake soon becomes their prime suspect, which saddens Addy. Addy goes to Janae’s home, and Janae confirms that Simon did indeed orchestrate his own death. He used his knowledge about Addy’s infidelity to persuade Jake to help him, including planting the fake cell phones that led the group being assigned to detention. After Simon’s death, Jake wrote the anonymous posts and forced Janae to plant evidence that would implicate his ex-girlfriend Addy—or so Jake thought. In the end, Janae couldn’t bring herself frame Addy because Addy had been so kind to her after Simon’s death, so she framed Nate instead. The framing of Nate was a deception that the police were all too willing to accept as fact.

Confronted by Jake in her home, Janae tries to stand up to him and get him to admit to his role in the framing plot while Addy hides and records their conversation on her phone. But when Addy’s phone rings at this inopportune moment, she is chased from the house by Jake. Addy falls, hitting her head on a rock, and Jake begins to throttle her. Cooper suddenly appears just in time to pull Jake off Addy and save her life. The authorities are called, and Jake is taken into custody.

Addy recovers from Jake’s attack, Nate is released from jail, and the Bayview Four, now exonerated, move forward with their lives. Nate decides that Bronwyn is better off without him, but she Bronwyn is hurt by his coldness toward her. A few months later, members of the group gather to watch Bronwyn perform in a recital. Afterward, Nate surprises Bronwyn with an apology. So many good things in Nate’s life have been ruined, but he doesn’t want to lose Bronwyn. They agree to resume their relationship.

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One of us is lying by Karen M McManus: A Book review

Book Name: One of us is lying

Author: Karen M. McManus

Genre: Fiction – Young Adult , Mystery

Characters: Bronwyn, Nate, Addy, Jake, Cooper, Simon

Setting:  California , The USA

Plot Summary of One of us is lying

The story begins at detention with five students that fit the popular stereotypes – Bronwyn the class nerd, Nate the brooding bad boy, Addy the pretty and popular girl, Cooper the athlete, and Simon the outcast.

Simon holds a knife over everyone else’s head with help of the school’s gossip website and he knows a lot. Things go haywire when Simon dies of an allergic reaction right in front of them at the detention center.

The police suspect foul play and the four teens are brought under spotlight. Did the fact that Simon was going to publish their secrets the next day had anything to do with his death? You will have to read One of us is lying to know more.

Book review of  One of us is lying

As someone who loves reading whodunnit, I sorta guessed the murderer easily. Well, my theory almost worked, though not completely. Karen M. McManus’s writing was fast at some places, especially around the murder, and then lagged in other places. I wish it had a consistent pace but it was not a deal breaker.

Things that worked for me

• It is definitely an easy to read book and I finished reading it in a few hours. And needless to say it was un-put-down-able.
• Kudos to the author for writing such a mostly fast paced story with typical characters and yet, make her mark. 
• I liked Addy’s character growth, from an airhead to sort of empowered(?). It would have been great if there was such a character development for all the other characters as well. 
• Though marketed as a thriller, it has much more of romance and drama from the other side plots, which kept the story moving, all though slowly. 

Things that didn’t work for me

• The multiple POVs for various characters sounded pretty much the same to me. 
• How many red herrings are too many? ‘One of us is lying’ many. Since I kinda already guessed it, I felt the clues were too many apparently misleading. 
• The romance kinda felt forced and the book might have been more crisper without it.
• I think I keep repeating this on all my YA reviews. Where are the adults?  And why is the police so incompetent? 

Bottom line

Despite the cliched characters and events, One of us is lying held my attention for the few hours it took for me to finish it.If you like a YA mystery that is more on the side of YA, you might like One of us is lying. If you are looking for more solid mystery/thriller, there are better options.

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Let us chat

Have you read One of us is lying by Karen M McManus? How did it fare on your scale? What are the clichés that turn you off the Young Adult genre? Let us talk.

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34 comments.

It sounds like this one was an okay one. It sounds like the pacing could’ve used improving and maybe a bit of a different marketing as it wasn’t quite in the right genre as it was promoted for, but it also sounds like it was a hooking read and you did manage to enjoy it as well! I know my younger sister read this one but I’m not sure if I will or not…

It was too long for my taste but I loved her writing style.

Lovely review adding this book to my tbr

Glad to be of use.

I read this a month ago and I really enjoyed it! Like you, I flew through it. Unlike you, I had no idea who was the killer! Great review!

Well, I will blame the hundreds of mystery novels that I have read for spoiling most books for me.

That cover is kind of freaky – haha!

Yes. The cover kinda makes sense right?

I figured it out, but that didn’t spoil this book for me, because I was fully engrossed and invested in this story.

Sometimes figuring it out makes it enjoy better, right?

Love the review, the book sounds really good, I haven’t read it but if there was so many POV’s I would get confused trying to figure out which one i was reading. I also agree with Jenn your design layout really works.

Thanks for the encouragement on my design. I will try to improve.

I have seen conflicting reviews on this one and I have already bought it. Oops. Brilliant review.

I hope you will enjoy it.

I really enjoyed this one!

Glad you liked it.

I tried this in audio format and I couldn’t do. While they had separate narrators for the cast it became to muddled for me. I plan on reading it but have moved to the bottom of the TBR. (Maybe not the bottom, but pretty close.)

Even while reading the book there were not much difference between the different POVs sadly.

I’ve looked at this book a few times but never gotten around to reading it. Lovely review. I must get it read soon.

Thanks, and this one was quite popular on the Twitter a while ago.

I seem to be conflicted about this one…

I understand, I did the same a while ago.

Hmm, I don’t know

I understand how that is.

I had an ARC of one of Us is Lying and loved it. Can’t wait to read the sequel.

There is a sequel? I never knew that, will check for it.

It’s due out in January 2019. It’s called Two can keep A Secret. I can’t wait!

Yay! Will check out.

I read this last year and thought it was really good.

Yes, it was kinda unputdownable right?

Sounds like a good read. I like the way you explained what worked and what didn’t work for you.

Yay, thanks.

I read this one last year and loved reading it. I agree that some of the POVs sound the same, and the police are scary incompetent. But the story is mysterious and enjoyable. By the way, I love the way your layout for this post!

I have been working out on some design changes for my blog. Hope it works out.

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Gayathri has been reviewing books since 2010. When she is not reading books or creating online content, she works as a writer and a digital marketer. Head over to meet me!

One of Us Is Lying #2

One of us is next, karen m. mcmanus.

377 pages, Hardcover

First published January 7, 2020

About the author

Ratings & Reviews

What do you think? Rate this book Write a Review

Friends & Following

Community reviews.

Come on, Bayview, you know you’ve missed this.

Come on, Bayview, you know you’ve missed this. A ton of copycat gossip apps have popped up since Simon died, but in the year since the Bayview four were cleared of his shocking death, no one’s been able to fill the gossip void quite like he could. The problem is no one has the facts. Until now. This time it’s not an app, though—it’s a game. Truth or Dare. Phoebe‘s the first target. If you choose not to play, it’s a truth. And hers is dark. Then comes Maeve and she should know better—always choose the dare. But by the time Knox is about to be tagged, things have gotten dangerous. The dares have become deadly, and if Maeve learned anything from Bronwyn last year, it’s that they can’t count on the police for help. Or protection. Simon’s gone, but someone’s determined to keep his legacy at Bayview High alive. And this time, there’s a whole new set of rules.

“Here’s a little advice for the next time we play: Always take the Dare.”

𖦹 ⋆. “we’re like the Kardashians, except without any money.”

𖦹 ⋆. “love and hope and beauty still exist, even when things seem impossibly dark.”

𖦹 ⋆. “addy is the queen of second chances, and right now I really need the reminder that those exist.”

Join the discussion

Can't find what you're looking for.

We found a way to escape Meta AI on Facebook - but there's a catch

If you've browsed Facebook or Instagram within the past few weeks, you've probably noticed some changes. Thanks to the introduction of Meta AI , artificial intelligence is now integrated into posts on your feed and the search function on both sites.

Meta calls the assistant a way to "get things done, learn, create, and connect with the things that matter to you." Meta AI works much like ChatGPT and other popular AI tools, but many have voiced frustration with accidentally tapping on a query below a post and engaging the chatbot or trying to search for a profile and running into the chatbot instead.

Also: The best AI chatbots: ChatGPT isn't the only one worth trying

So what's the deal? Can you turn off Meta AI?

It turns out you can't. There's no way to disable Meta AI from either Facebook or Instagram in either the browser version or the app version. I asked Meta AI if I could disable it, and the chatbot responded that I could.

"Select Settings and Privacy," it said, "Then click on Settings and scroll down to AI settings and click on AI and machine learning." From that screen, I should "Toggle off AI search," the bot told me. Here's the thing: There are no further settings for AI within the main Settings page, and the toggle the chatbot mentions doesn't exist. 

Meta AI's help page  states that "Meta AI's responses may not be accurate or appropriate." That seems to be the case here.

Two "tricks" have been spreading on social media for disabling the feature, but neither worked when we tested them. Blocking the Meta AI profile on Facebook or muting it might give you a little hope when it takes away the new AI search icon and replaces it with the old magnifying glass, but if you actually press it, you land in the same place -- Meta AI search.

The one way to avoid Meta AI 

If you're willing to use a very stripped-down version of Facebook, you can visit  http://mbasic.facebook.com . That version looks pretty bad on mobile and even worse on a desktop browser, but the functionality is there if you're adamant about avoiding Meta AI, which you will not find there.  

The good news is that you can still search Facebook via the Meta AI tool. On Facebook, there's an animated blue ring where the search button used to be. Tap it, and you'll see a search bar that says, "Ask Meta AI anything." If you start typing someone's name, profiles will pop up as usual. If you're looking for a specific post or picture, that functionality works as it did before. So while the search button might not be as obvious, once you know where it is, the search process works just like it did before.

Also:  Can Meta AI code? I tested it against Llama, Gemini, and ChatGPT - it wasn't even close

There is some value in using Meta AI. You can use it through Messenger or WhatsApp to write content, generate images, and plan events. The chatbot can offer ideas and make suggestions below most Facebook or Instagram posts that tell you more about a certain aspect of that post. If a friend posts about seeing the cherry blossoms in Washington, D.C., for example, you might see a suggestion to ask when the best time to see them is.

While the chatbot might be confusing at first, it appears that Meta AI is here to stay -- whether you like it or not. The big question is: Will users eventually embrace, or ultimately avoid, Meta AI across Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp?

AI just helped us find out where Plato is buried - here's how

5 ways ai can help you study for finals - for free, how i test an ai chatbot's coding ability - and you can too.

Biden blasted for brag about leaving ‘no one behind’: ‘Except in Afghanistan, Niger, Gaza…’

As the November elections draw nearer, the astounding lies from President Joe Biden are getting bigger, bolder, and more offensive to Americans who know better.

On Thursday, the president posted on X a photo of himself in his “Dark Brandon” aviators, grinning ear to ear in front of the American flag.

“On my watch, when we make promises, we keep them,” the caption read. “And we leave no one behind.”

On my watch, when we make promises, we keep them. And we leave no one behind. pic.twitter.com/BoHVsraIqz — President Biden (@POTUS) May 9, 2024

“Except in Afghanistan, Niger, and Gaza,” replied one user. “You left Americans behind and didn’t do sh*t to bring them back.”

Except in Afghanistan, Niger, and Gaza. You left Americans behind and didn’t do shit to bring them back. — R T (@RDog861) May 9, 2024

You literally left everyone behind in Afghanistan. — EducatëdHillbilly™ (@RobProvince) May 9, 2024

Tell us about your disaster leaving 13 behind in Afghanistan You’re such a mook pic.twitter.com/7S9gP2PH8y — An American (@Joe7993) May 9, 2024

The declaration came less than 24 hours after the supposedly loyal president proclaimed he would unilaterally withhold Congressionally approved military aid to Israel if the Jewish state proceeded with plans to invade Rafah.

(Video: YouTube)

“What timing,” political commentator Guy Benson said of Biden’s post.

what timing https://t.co/VLrqMkeOto — Guy Benson (@guypbenson) May 9, 2024

International Human Rights attorney Arsen Ostrovsky reminded Biden of the American hostages being held by terrorists in the wartorn region.

These five American hostages being held captive by Hamas in Gaza, could not be reached for comment. pic.twitter.com/sewSaWqPsb — Arsen Ostrovsky ️ (@Ostrov_A) May 9, 2024

House members were also quick to call the president out:

There are American hostages in Gaza and abandoned allies in Afghanistan. https://t.co/PbSMCJ9Kqm — Speaker Mike Johnson (@SpeakerJohnson) May 9, 2024

REMINDER: Joe Biden left Americans behind in Afghanistan. No amount of gaslighting can ever change this fact. https://t.co/RZ9pBZKSEi pic.twitter.com/BFWZjdXqhr — Byron Donalds (@ByronDonalds) May 9, 2024

…except the Americans you left behind in Afghanistan. …and the American hostages you’ve abandoned in Gaza. Despicable. https://t.co/UqMUFitcmk — Rep. Andrew Clyde (@Rep_Clyde) May 9, 2024

11 embassies had to evacuate under Biden’s watch. Many Americans were left in Afghanistan and Haiti. No one left behind? https://t.co/LY4ArFI5EE — Rep. María Elvira Salazar (@RepMariaSalazar) May 9, 2024

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) noted that Biden is leaving Americans behind in Africa “RIGHT NOW!”

Tell that to the 1100+ American service members & contractors stuck in Niger, Africa RIGHT NOW! https://t.co/HJGV6xvF7T — Matt Gaetz (@mattgaetz) May 10, 2024

“Joe Biden is putting American service members in harm’s way to construct a pier in Gaza,” Gaetz wrote in a separate post. “He is neglecting 1,100 troops who are functionally being held hostage in Niger. He botched the withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Joe Biden is putting American service members in harm’s way to construct a pier in Gaza. He is neglecting 1,100 troops who are functionally being held hostage in Niger. He botched the withdrawal from Afghanistan. It all paints the picture of a world that is less safe than when… pic.twitter.com/RtGXGB1SmE — Rep. Matt Gaetz (@RepMattGaetz) May 9, 2024

And then there’s the case of Tigran Gambaryan.

“American citizen and former US federal agent Tigran Gambaryan is being held hostage in Nigeria as the Biden Administration is nowhere to be seen,” reported Colin Rugg on X. “Gambaryan, a Binance executive, was lured to Nigeria for a business meeting.”

“To invite a company’s mid-level employees for collaborative policy meetings, only to detain them, has set a dangerous new precedent for all companies worldwide,” Binance CEO Richard Teng said in a statement, according to Reuters . “Gambaryan was being held in Nigeria for more than two months ‘for spurious reasons,’ Teng said.”

Nigerian officials “are now trying to extort Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, of $150M+ for his release or else they will transfer him to a prison known to hold terrorists,” Rugg reports. “Gambaryan has been in Nigerian custody for over 70 days yet the Biden administration has yet to say a word.”

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John James Audubon was flawed. Should he get credit for his good work?

A new book, ‘The Birds That Audubon Missed’ by Kenn Kaufman, delves into the controversies dividing the birding world

For better and worse, the name Audubon has become almost synonymous with birds. The reason, of course, is John James Audubon, whose “Birds of America” project, published from 1827 to 1838, catalogued more than 400 birds in life-size prints. The works captured the avian world in a breadth and detail never before seen, turning its French American creator into a celebrated naturalist.

In recent years, questions have been raised about Audubon’s legacy, starting with the ethics of his work — the Audubon Society has conceded that he “most certainly committed” plagiarism and academic fraud. He also was an enslaver and a critic of emancipation, and sent stolen human remains to an anthropologist who used them to study racial differences.

Given this complicated biography — ably explored by naturalist Kenn Kaufman in his new book, “ The Birds That Audubon Missed: Discovery and Desire in the American Wilderness ” — should Audubon still get “credit for the good work he did, while acknowledging all that was wrong?” Kaufman asks.

Many conservation organizations are asking that question too and arriving at dissonant conclusions about whether to keep the Audubon name. Similar controversy surrounds the names of birds themselves. The American Ornithological Society, which standardizes the English-language common names of birds in the Americas, recently announced that eponymous names (those that include the name of a person) will gradually be phased out in favor of descriptive names, thus putting an end to a practice particularly prevalent in the era of settler expansion. For instance, Scott’s oriole was named in 1854 after Gen. Winfield Scott, who had nothing to do with ornithology but plenty to do with the Trail of Tears, the genocidal forced relocation of Native Americans over which he presided.

Kaufman informs these debates by going to the heart of that era. His book is a must-read for birders curious about so much that lies hidden behind the names in our pastime; it illuminates the personalities, rivalries and shortcomings of the men (no women) of European ancestry (no others need apply) who set out to outdo one another and make a name for themselves by finding and naming birds — and why some birds were overlooked in the process.

In telling these tales, Kaufman sometimes meanders. He quickly settles on Audubon as his main focus, but he has a slight tendency to go down rabbit holes. For instance, he delves into the theory that Audubon was in fact “the Lost Dauphin,” a son of Queen Marie Antoinette and King Louis XVI of France, who may have — or if this theory is correct, may not have — died in prison during the French Revolution. Audubon did not claim this title, but Kaufman nonetheless spends several pages wondering if it might be, a digression that some readers may find intriguing but others may see as extraneous.

But this is just a quibble in a book that brings together such a vast amount of information and presents it in such an engaging way. “The Birds That Audubon Missed” isn’t a dry history; it’s as alive as the birds it describes, thanks to the personal aspect Kaufman weaves into the narrative. In addition to offering his own birding adventures as a living-color counterpoint to the past, Kaufman, best known for his field guides and other books such as “ A Season on the Wind ” (2019), scatters illustrations through the text — some are by Audubon and some are by Kaufman, who boldly attempts to create new paintings in the style of Audubon. The effort highlights just how much Kaufman longs to feel something of what these naturalists of yesteryear experienced. That is where “The Birds That Audubon Missed” excels; the real beauty of the book is expressed in its subtitle, in the moments when Kaufman gives in to that longing for discovery and whispers of desire:

“When I watch a flock of sandpipers lift off from a coastal lagoon and climb into the sky, it lifts my soul — not only because of the beauty of their flight, but also because I know they might not touch down for a thousand miles. Scientific knowledge of the migrations of these birds, based on years of research, doesn’t take away from the sense of magic; it makes it stronger.”

A little later, in a passage where he describes curlews as “children of the wind,” you can almost feel yourself carried aloft with these large, dramatic shorebirds as they crisscross the globe in their seasonal wanderings. These musings culminate in a fitting conclusion: that the era of great discovery never ends if all discovery is personal. One’s own revelatory experiences in the natural world are what truly matter.

The fundamental — and unavoidable — problem with “The Birds That Audubon Missed” lies in its “great white men” focus. Kaufman acknowledges from the outset, and mentions occasionally throughout, that this is a particular brand of history stemming from a time that minimized, ignored and discounted anything that didn’t originate from an extremely narrow band of humanity. Indeed, that constitutes one of the criticisms of eponymous bird names. White explorers took credit for “discovering” birds that may have been well known to Indigenous people and then slapped some White friends’ or patrons’ names on them; some of these names we blithely continue to use.

“Our perceptions are shaped by the names and definitions we apply to things,” Kaufman notes of birds that were misunderstood because they’d been labeled and pigeonholed (pun intended) incorrectly; what’s true biologically is even more so culturally. A book exploring the Indigenous knowledge of our avifauna — one that, say, gave primacy to the Choctaw biskinik and its place in that culture, rather than defaulting to the English name of that woodpecker, the yellow-bellied sapsucker — would be welcome. But that’s another book, one that with history’s focus on the dominant narrative might be exceedingly difficult to put together.

Kaufman does an admirable job of exploring the history that’s before us. He didn’t set out to render a verdict on the naming controversies, but he does answer his own question: If we can move beyond hagiography, we can at least acknowledge what Audubon did, for good and ill. And if, as some claim, losing the names means erasing history, then Kaufman’s book is one way to cure this alleged amnesia.

Christian Cooper is the author of “Better Living Through Birding: Notes From a Black Man in the Natural World” and host of the National Geographic TV show “Extraordinary Birder.”

The Birds That Audubon Missed

Discovery and Desire in the American Wilderness

By Kenn Kaufman

Avid Reader. 384 pp. $32.50

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Check out our coverage of this year’s Pulitzer winners: Jayne Anne Phillips won the fiction prize for her novel “ Night Watch .” The nonfiction prize went to Nathan Thrall, for “ A Day in the Life of Abed Salama .” Cristina Rivera Garza received the memoir prize for “ Liliana’s Invincible Summer .” And Jonathan Eig received the biography prize for his “ King: A Life .”

Best books of 2023: See our picks for the 10 best books of 2023 or dive into the staff picks that Book World writers and editors treasured in 2023. Check out the complete lists of 50 notable works for fiction and the top 50 nonfiction books of last year.

Find your favorite genre: Three new memoirs tell stories of struggle and resilience, while five recent historical novels offer a window into other times. Audiobooks more your thing? We’ve got you covered there, too . If you’re looking for what’s new, we have a list of our most anticipated books of 2024 . And here are 10 noteworthy new titles that you might want to consider picking up this April.

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The Struggle for Taiwan by Sulmaan Wasif Khan review – dire straits

How superpower rivalry and diplomatic failures have turned the island into a the world’s riskiest flashpoint

A s flashpoints go, few come flashier than Taiwan . To pick one incident from a string of recent close calls: the visit of Nancy Pelosi to Taipei in the summer of 2022. Pelosi, then speaker of the House and third in line to the presidency, was travelling to Taiwan to make an “unequivocal statement that America stands with Taiwan”. The visit produced predictable fury in Beijing: it was “manic, irresponsible and highly irrational”, according to officials; Pelosi was “playing with fire”. Troops were placed on high alert; military exercises were ordered; missiles were launched into the Taiwan Strait. The editor of one mainland tabloid even called for Pelosi’s plane to be shot down. But the more Beijing threatened, the more determined the speaker became, and so, for a few days that August, the world’s two largest economies stood one small military accident away from catastrophic conflict.

How, the observer wonders, did we come to this? There are a dozen reasons, which Sulmaan Wasif Khan, a historian at Tufts University, lays out in his deeply researched and fascinating history of the island. But the nutshell answer is that a mixture of poisonous nationalism and fudged diplomacy over many years, combined with the premierships of Xi Jinping and Donald Trump, has turned the Sino-American relationship into a tinderbox. Taiwan could be the spark that ignites it.

One of the ironies that emerges here is that the island that nationalists in Beijing covet wasn’t historically Chinese, but ended up that way thanks to American interference. Until the 17th century, the people of Taiwan were mostly ethnic Austronesians. The island was then conquered by the Qing dynasty, who hailed from Manchuria, and who maintained a clear China-Taiwan distinction. After the Qing came the Japanese, who held it until 1945. It was President Roosevelt who promised it to a Chinese leader, Chiang Kai-shek, in 1943. When Chiang was defeated in the Chinese civil war by Mao’s communists in 1949, he retreated to the island, which he intended to use as a base to reconquer the mainland. Only now did leaders on both sides of the strait maintain that Taiwan was an integral part of China – Chiang because he continued to claim the whole country was his Republic of China (this is still the island’s official name); Mao because he saw it as a rogue territory within his People’s Republic of China (PRC).

What followed for Taiwan was a difficult balancing act. The US proved an ambivalent Taiwanese protector: successive presidents attempted to wriggle out of security guarantees made to Taipei in order to develop relations with the mainland, but time after time they were stymied by anti-communist populists in US Congress. The Carter administration at last managed to free the country of its commitment to Taiwan in 1978, recognising the PRC instead of the ROC, and for a few decades it seemed possible that Taiwan might willingly integrate with the mainland. But then came Xi and Trump.

Before his elevation to power, Xi showed every sign of following the paths of his pragmatic predecessors, who ran the “one country, two systems” policy that steered China towards a market economy and allowed a degree of political freedom in some territories. But Xi’s premiership was to be marked by thin-skinned authoritarianism, which trashed his predecessors’ careful “normalisation” and clamped down on political dissent, including in Hong Kong. Any hope that a democratic Taiwan might one day submit willingly to Beijing evaporated.

A decade later, on the other side of the Pacific, Trump would elevate the sport of China-bashing to a level not seen since the “yellow peril” days. It was a theme that no doubt played well with some blue-collar voters, and it has since entered the political mainstream. Worse still for Xi was Covid – Trump’s “China virus” – which presented the US leader with an open goal. If Trump’s US had a difficult pandemic, Xi’s was devastating: his government was secretive, controlling, ineffective, and the economy tanked too. All of which created new political impetus for sabre-rattling over Taiwan.

China-US relations now stand “at the edge of chaos”, according to Khan. Beijing’s aggression in the strait has hit new heights, and Biden appears to have recommitted the US to defend Taiwan militarily. A cataclysm beckons.

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