Gossip Girl as a YA thriller?
Dear Daisy,
do you remember when we were watching Gossip Girl together? And Pretty Little Liars? The book I just finished felt like a literary mixture between those two shows. It is One of Us is Lying ...
Dear Daisy,
do you remember when we were watching Gossip Girl together? And Pretty Little Liars? The book I just finished felt like a literary mixture between those two shows. It is One of Us is Lying by Karen M. McManus which was released by Penguin in 2017.
This story is about a murder investigation. A very strange one, that is. Five high school students (though, I had real difficulties to keep their names apart and had to use a mind map to help me remember them through most of the book; this already speaks for the writing style … or my memory?) are sentenced to detention. But only four come out alive. The boy who was killed was the very boy who kept writing a blog similar to Gossip Girl. The only difference being, that everyone new he was the author. You can imagine how unpopular he was. As a result of the murder, all of the other four students are treated as suspects as they were the only people in the room at the time of the murder. Hence, the jock, the bad-boy, the girl everyone thinks is perfect, and the one everyone knows to be a nerd have to work together to find out what actually happened. If only they didn’t each have secrets of their own…
Karen M. McManus uses a first person narrative to tell this gripping story. She keeps changing back and fourth between the four students, always giving you detailed information about the time things are happening. This was probably meant to make you feel the pressure of the noose pulling tight; but apart from a handful of times, it didn’t necessarily achieve this but was just additional information. Anyway, my actual point was the ever-changing narrators, which I immensely enjoyed. As a reader, you’re most likely to trust the first-person narrator. So knowing that (at least) one of the four was unreliable was an interesting experience. You never knew who to trust. And just when you thought you’d figured out what’s true and what isn’t everything is turned upside down again.
The characters are built in just that spirit. They appear to be stereotypes at first (hence, my issue with remembering their names) but it turns out that they are actually multi-dimensional. They weren’t perfectly rounded or anything but interesting enough to keep you reading as you want to figure out their secrets. Also, I felt like some of them developed interestingly over the course of the book and are therefore good role models for younger readers. I’d probably recommend it to middle school children and upwards. As there is equal potential for male and female identification I’d recommend this book to boys and girls alike.
As a more experienced reader (and having seen the two series I mentioned in the beginning) I had a strong feeling for what the solution to the mystery would be early on. (It actually proved to be correct.) So, no big surprise there for me. But, as I just said, especially younger readers will most certainly enjoy this book and will certainly be shocked over some of the plot-twists it has to offer. Let me just say that much: nothing is as it seems.
Are you curious, yet? I’d love to hear your opinion on this YA thriller.
Cheers,
Daffy