One of Us is Lying Study Guide

Karen M. McManus lives and writes in Massachusetts, where she earned a BA from the College of the Holy Cross and an MA in journalism from Northeastern University. Her background in journalism helps her to craft the fake news headlines for her novels, which are thrillers and mysteries. After dabbling in writing dystopian fiction inspired by The Hunger Games, McManus found her stride when she decided to undertake a modern retelling of The Breakfast Club—with a serious twist. In just two months, she wrote One of Us Is Lying, and it shot to the top of the New York Times Bestsellers List shortly after its publication. She is a single mother who works in marketing, and her second novel, Two Can Keep a Secret, is scheduled for release in 2019.

The novel is set in Southern California, and focuses on many concerns typically associated with the millennial generation—specifically social media addiction and abuse, entitlement, and the unique financial struggles members of this generation are facing throughout not just the United States, but the world over. The novel also delves into questions of large-scale violence in schools across America; when Simon Kelleher becomes hell-bent on taking revenge against the conformist “lemmings” at his school, he looks up to the work of mass shooters but wants to do something more original. By engaging issues both of social media abuse and mass violence, McManus shows how insidious webs of lies, rumors, and scandals can be turned against popular students by those in less socially advantageous positions in order to incite suspicion, anger, and even violence.

Many mysteries and thrillers set in contemporary American high schools have been topping best-seller charts over the last several years, and it’s no secret why: more authors than ever are engaging contemporary issues of violence, race, apathy, and the damaging effects of social media and capitalism on modern American teenagers. Dana Mele’s People Like Us and Jay Asher’s Thirteen Reasons Why focus on revenge plots—or moralistic lessons—taught by deceased high-school students from beyond the grave, while Lauren Oliver’s Before I Fall considers the effects of social media, popularity contests, and insidious gossip on a group of high school students. McManus’s use of a rotating first-person point of view and a cadre of unreliable narrators is inspired by popular thrillers for adults, too: Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl, Paula Hawkins’s The Girl on the Train, and Alice Feeney’s Sometimes I Lie are all twisty thrillers whose narrators are often less than truthful.