One of Us is Lying is a young adult “whodunnit” murder mystery. it’s based on a novel of the same name by Karen M. McManus. Now, despite not being the target demographic, I decided that a really good “whodunnit” would be worth the time. Now truth be told it gripped me. I would question my life choices that brought me here for about 95% of each episode and then the final 5% would grab me just enough to find out what happens next.
The truth is that nothing happens next. It was always a disappointment.
Sad Wayne
Plot summery
Note there are some minor spoilers. I doubt you are going to watch it after this review but I thought I would warn you.
It’s the first day of school for our senior protagonists. There is one kid named Simon who is touted as an anti-hero. Simon is raging against the hypocrisy of his fellow students. He has developed this app that everyone has installed where he broadcasts secrets about his fellow learners. As one can imagine Simon is not a very well-liked person. He only has one friend, an emo junior.
On this first day of school he teases four stories that he is going to publish at the end of the week about what everyone did last summer. The stories are teased in such a way that the perpetrators instantly know that they are the ones being targeted. It is really very obvious so I’m not sure why everyone else doesn’t know but that will be the least of our worries.
All four students and Simon land up in detention on that first day of school. As detention is starting a raucous occurs outside and the teacher leaves the class. While everyone is distracted Simon sips some water and goes into anaphylactic shock. Damn peanut allergy. The students rush around trying to find an EpiPen and one of them calls 911. Unfortunately the paramedics arrive too late and Simon dies. Well not that unfortunate, because Simon is a real privileged arsehole. This whole app thing is really just him bullying other kids. He is the mayor’s son and lives in a mansion. Talk about hypocrisy. You do feel bad for emo kid Janae. Simon was her only friend even if he did something to her that led to her attempting suicide.
“Damn peanut allergy”
Turns out that the police find that the peanut oil was placed in Simon’s water so one of the kids that were with him in detention is the killer. You will notice that I haven’t named the kids because they are actually just archetypes. Smart girl, baseball jock, the blonde one and the loser drug dealer guy with a soft heart. Anyway, they are allowed to return to school and carry on like nothing really happened even though one of them allegedly murdered a fellow student.
So the four of them decide that the best course of action is to lie about absolutely everything to the police and collectively try and find the killer themselves. The story is told through the four main characters in the present and through flashbacks of Simon, and their interactions with him in the past.
Why it’s so bad
I cannot stress this enough, the lies told make zero sense. At first I was like maybe this would be the reaction of a teen under stress and that they may lie. But as their secrets come out they just compound the lying about everything. And on the subject of secrets, we know for certain that Simon knew two of the secrets. One is highly probable that he didn’t know and the other is almost impossible that he knew. These kids are real arseholes and you struggle to actually like them.
Eventually, we get the big climax and the killer is revealed, but we still don’t know why. Oh, it hasn’t ended yet. Okay, so they know who the killer is and they go with all the evidence to the police and… no, no they don’t. They go get the evidence themselves, through a seriously convoluted plan which apparently involves making out in the middle of it. Look at this point there is nothing stupid that they can do which will surprise me.
Stupid is as stupid does
Oh wait, I really didn’t see that coming! Apparently I was wrong. They really can be more stupid. Anyway so they go on to live… no. Wrong again Wayne, they are teasing a season 2. The actual killers motives and plan are just wildly implausible. It’s irritating as they go through the flashbacks to tell the story because none of it makes any sense.
Also there are no overweight people in this school. I mean the debate nerd guy gets his shirt off and has the body of a Greek god. Then one of the character gets grounded, not for killing someone or cheating or lying, but for having a boy at the house. She then proceeds to just carry on as she was before and goes anywhere she wants. There is also a scene where evidence is planted but instead of sending the tipoff to the police, the killer sends it to Janae via a message that disappears after she reads it.
Verdict
If you want a lobotomy, an ice pick will be less painful.
The novel has 4/5 stars on goodreads so maybe that is a better bet.
