One of Us is Lying Review by Bryce Agnew

 One of us is Lying is a mystery thriller by Karen M Macnus.  If the title attracts you, chances are you’ll love this book.  This book follows the stressful lives of 4 murder suspects who aren’t even old enough to drink alcohol yet.  All of them are in high school, which is what made them suspects in the first place.  The students had been corralled into detention with another student.  This student, arguably the class’s most likely to be murdered, started to have trouble breathing during detention.  Then he collapsed, and despite efforts to save his life, the 17 year old died.  The student, Simon Kelleher,  is later revealed to have been troubled, psychotic, and was planning on releasing gossip about all of the students he had been in detention with.  In short, they all would’ve had a reason for wanting him dead.  This book will play with your mind, making you question whether one of these students, dubbed the Bayview 4, could have really murdered their classmate or if the police were focusing on the wrong people.  

Simon Kellheller ran a gossip app that talked about students at Bayview high school that couldn’t be stopped, only identifying students by their initials.  Running it for a while, he was able to gain experience and new sources for information that had managed to ruin lives.  Students had ended relationships, turned on each other, and even left the district because of him.  While I wouldn’t want to spoil the book for you, let's just say that what Simon was about to release about the 4 students-turned-suspects was devastating, potentially career-ending, relationship-ending, and even freedom-destroying.  Yes, he was planning on sending one of the students to jail.  The worst part is that it was practically guaranteed that he would be believed, because his “rumors” always ended up being facts.  He was heartless and bitter, not caring about the lives he ruined.  That is not to say that the people he was planning to write about had halos hovering over their heads.  Most of them had done something wrong, but one student’s entry was true, then edited, leaving another clue as to what really happened to Simon.  

The rumor-spreader never got to post his own entries.  They were found, though, and if a murderer intended on covering up the gossip, they failed.  This leads to speculation that a third unknown party was involved in Kellheller’s death.  The author dances around the possibility of other people who had been wronged by Simon, like Aiden Wu, the student who left Bayview High due to the horrible things he had written about him.  Suspects are added just as quickly as they are eliminated.  It is almost impossible to narrow down the list.

The suspense builds up as the media gets more involved and your average high schoolers waiting until graduation turn into high profile murder suspects.  The Bayview 4 have their lives slowly ruined, and something hints that the chaos is all planned.  Was there some grand scheme to kill Simon and ruin the lives of these high schoolers?  Were there multiple people conspiring against the students? This book really gave me a new perspective on what it means to be a bad person.After the first five pages it is difficult to not get invested in this book.  Maybe you can figure out who killed Simon.  Read it.