The first disappointment of summer

I'll be honest -- I picked One of Us Is Lying by Karen M. McManus because of the cover and the inside flap teaser. Try to read this from the inside flap and NOT be intrigued:  "On Monday afternoon, five students at Bayview High walk into detention. . . The Brain . . . the Beauty . . . the Criminal . . . The Athlete . . . and Simon, the Outcast . . . Before the end of detention, Simon's dead."   How?  Who?  What happened?

The Brain, Beauty, Criminal, and Athlete provide alternating first-person perspectives of the events before, during, and after the deadly detention.  Possible answers to the who/what/when/where/why questions are tossed out in nearly every chapter.  Maybe the Criminal and his new-found love, the Brain, colluded to do it!  Maybe the Beauty did it out of revenge!  Oh, could it possibly be the "perfect" Athlete who's carrying a secret only Simon knew?  Could be any -- or none -- of those.  Disappointingly, the storyline and characters proved to be cliche and underdeveloped. I moved quickly through the book because I lost interest, and I hated the end.

This book is less Breakfast Club with murder and more 13 Reasons Why with only five reasons or Nineteen Minutes without the guns.  I'll be curious to share this with kiddos this fall and get their perspective.  Adult me didn't really dig it, but I'm not the audience for this book.

And, totally, unrelated, I am STILL working my way through American Gods on my Kindle.  I will persevere, and I WILL FINISH THIS BOOK!