This was so much better than I thought it was going to be! And I don’t even care that I guessed most of the ending about halfway through. I ended up liking the characters so much by the end, I just wanted to hug and squeeze them all.
I suggested One of Us is Lying to my book club, and as soon as they heard, “The Breakfast Club, but with murder,” they didn’t even want to listen to any of my other suggestions. Sometimes you just can’t resist a good premise. And I think it lived up to it! I read this book so fast. I would have read it all in one sitting except that I had to go to work and do work and not read all day because of work.
Look, I’m not going to say this was super cleverly plotted or anything, because I’m pretty sure if I can guess your main twist, it’s not the best hidden twist. But I honestly didn’t really care that my theory ended up being right, and it wasn’t really a surprise, because I liked the rest of the book so much. My favorite part wasn’t even the murder plot and figuring out whodunnit, it was the characters. A lot of the time in mysteries and thrillers, you sacrifice character for plot, but all the characters here had nice arcs, and they were flawed and did shitty things, but by the end I just felt for them all so much and I can’t really say why because spoilers. As a teenager, this book would have blown my mind. As an adult, I still thought it was pretty great.
You should probably read it if that premise sounds at all intriguing to you.
[4.5 stars]
We feel very much the same about this one, and it was a rare mystery where I genuinely felt being right about the whodunnit actually made the back half of the book even better.
What I really want to say in response to this is spoilery, so I will just say, agreed!
I loved this one! And felt the same about the twist. It was more important that it made sense and affected the characters than being a surprise up until the end. In fact, I read even faster just to see if I was right!
If the only point of your book is the twist, you have failed. I have read so many thrillers where the twist was the whole point, and if it doesn’t work for you or you figure it out, the whole book falls apart. This book was centered around a twist nominally, but in actuality was centered around the characters. Basically the opposite of my reading experience with We Were Liars, just for one example. (And similar titles, too!)
I clearly need to move this higher up on my TBR list.
Yes! You will like this a lot, and it’s not emotionally taxing.
I really liked this book, I’m glad you did too!