I’d be the liar If I didn’t admit that One of us is Lying fell incredibly flat for me. I just could not bring myself to care about the mystery aspects of this story at all. I enjoyed the book enough while I was reading it, but wow every time I put it down I was like …. Do I really want to continue with this right now or should I read something else?

So here’s the story: Five students are in detention because someone planted phones on them. One student dies because someone put peanut oil in his water, and he has a peanut allergy. The four remaining students are all suspects in this murder case, which could have resulted in a really interesting story except for one problem. THE CHARACTERS ARE ALL TOO DAMN LIKABLE. I never for a second believed that any of them would have done it. I loved reading about these characters, their storylines, their growth, their secrets etc., but I could not view them as murder suspects and therefore I had a hard time caring about the actual plot of the story.
So yeah blah blah blah the plot unfolds the ending is revealed, I’ll skip all of those details since it’s supposed to be a big reveal and I don’t want to take away from the fun for other readers. The ending is pretty creative, despite not being overly interested in the investigation while it was happening I was really impressed by the ending. There were definitely some aspects of it that were easy enough to figure out, and when all was said and done I wasn’t super surprised by any of it…the clues were there all along I just didn’t necessarily think anything of them.

This story is considered a YA mystery/thriller but I think it would have been much better if it was marketed as a YA contemporary with a twist. At least then I would not have felt like this was such a let down. I think if I went into this expecting just a nice contemporary with some drama I would have enjoyed it more? This was very much a case of me just being disappointed because this was not what I was expecting.

Spoiler

Like come on the title is One of us is Lying and NONE of them were lying they were all legitimately innocent in the case, talk about false advertising!!! This story is marketed in a way that makes you think that you will suspect one of the MCs the entire time and then you just DON’T? All they are lying about is stupid drama that gets revealed so early on in the story. Boring. I almost would have preferred if one of them did end up being the person who did it, that would have been such a twist.

In summary: This book was alright, it has a lot of redeeming qualities but in my eyes none of them make up for the fact that this didn’t live up to my expectations (which I guess is my fault but I'm still mad about it). I know a lot of people will love this, and that a lot of people will love the same things I disliked, this just wasn’t for me.