On Thursday afternoon, five students at Bayview High walk into detention. It sounds like the start of The Breakfast Club right? The book takes a quick turn though. Read my review of One of Us is Lying by Karen McManus.

Review: One of Us is Lying

The start of this book felt way too much like an 80s teen movie but that changed really quickly. Five kids sent to detention – the jock, the princess, the brain, the outcast, and the criminal. But what happens when one of them doesn’t make it out alive?

Yep, the book quickly turned into a murder mystery, who-done-it, kind of story. Spoiler – it’s not who you think. But, the story was about so much more than just figuring out who killed Simon.

It was about how one decision can start a ball rolling that effects so many more people than you could imagine. It’s about how little actions, seemingly meaningless actions, can cause a ripple effect.

What if everyone you know has a big secret? How would lives be changed if everyone found out that huge secret? Now, rewind to high school and imagine how much worse it would be.

I also loved the varying parental reactions as they found out the secrets their children had been keeping. They ran the spectrum from anger to embarrassment to just being there.

This book was a very well written – it would be a great book to have your middle school or high school aged student read. It is, for the most part, a pg-13 story.

I could totally picture this book as a Netflix series – it’d be binge-worthy.

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