Literature / One of Us is Lying

"Anyway, they bring it on themselves. If people didn't lie and cheat, I'd be out of business."

— Simon, fifteen minutes before being murdered.

A jock. A brain. A criminal. A princess. Five students enter detention: four leave alive. One of Us is Lying is a 2017 Young Adult novel by Karen M. McManus that asks, what happens when The Breakfast Club ends with a murder?

Bronwyn has her sights set on Yale.

Golden boy Cooper is a shoo-in for a sports scholarship and dating the most beautiful girl in school.

Nate is on probation for drug dealing.

Addy and her boyfriend are Bayview High's It Couple.

Each of them have something to hide. And Bayview's gossip king Simon was about to expose them all on his app, About That. But before he can, he dies, poisoned while in detention with his four targets. One of them must have killed him. But who?

A sequel to One of Us is Lying, One of Us is Next, followed in January 2020 and concerned Bronwyn's sister Maeve, and a deadly game of truth or dare. A third book, "One of Us is Back," is due to follow late in 2023.

In 2020, it was announced that the book would be adapted into a series for NBCU streamer Peacock, which premiered in 2021.

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Tropes:

• Adults Are Useless: Albeit with some subversions. See also Police Are Useless, because hoo boy.
  • Eli is a subversion. A lawyer working for a non-profit, Until Proven, he's the first person to mention the possibility of Simon having other enemies, helps Bronwyn start her own investigation, and represents Nate after he's wrongfully arrested. In the sequel, Knox works for him as an intern.
  • The Bayview High teachers are played like fiddles by the real killer's accomplice Jake. Every time a new posting is made about the murder, the Bayview Four get pulled into the office and grilled about it. They're still at it in the sequel, when a zero-tolerance policy on gossip apps just means no one has any incentive to report the Truth or Dare game for fear of losing their phones.
  • A teacher being played like a fiddle by the murderer actually kicks off the plot. The biology teacher is a well-known Technophobe who routinely searches everyone's bags at the start of every lesson and puts anyone who brought their cell phone in detention. The killer uses this to isolate the Bayview Four and Simon by hiding phones in their bags.
  • A recurring theme is the Bayview Four receiving perfectly reasonable, sensible advice from the adults in their lives that they find simply doesn't work out in real life. For example, the advice for the kids to distance themselves from each other seems perfectly reasonable in deflecting suspicion, in practice their lives are falling apart and their social groups have pretty much closed ranks on them, so who else can they turn to but those in the same boat?
  • Nate's PO is a definite subversion. She's clearly on his side and is no fool, giving him good and sensible advice about getting his life together and escorting him to the police station to act as advocate when he's questioned. She can't stop him being wrongly arrested though.
• Alpha Bitch: Vanessa, the worst of the popular girls. She's described as engaging in serial "unsolicited groping" that would have gotten her in trouble for sexual harassment if she she was a boy even with boys who have girlfriends, leads the Slut-Shaming of Addy ( and saying it serves her right when someone trips her on the track field) while acting all nice whenever teachers are watching, publicly gay bashes Cooper and is described by Cooper as being positively gleeful at the opportunity to exclude anyone from something. She's become noticeably better in One of Us is Back, though.
• Amicable Exes: Cooper and Keely's breakup isn't tension free, but once it comes out that he's gay and she was The Beard she's one of the few popular kids not to mock Cooper over it, although she herself feels guilty for not defending him either, with the two talking things through off-screen at the end and Cooper feeling that they might stay friends.
• Amoral Attorney: Subverted. The lawyers are consummate professionals giving perfectly good advice, which the characters just find it impractical to follow. However, their job is to protect their own client, not the rest of the Four, nor is it to solve the murder. Eli, who works for a non-profit called Until Proven, is downright heroic.
• An Aesop: To err is human. Quoted directly by Yale's admissions when they tweet Bronwyn at the end. No one is perfect, everyone makes mistakes, and it's assholes like Simon and Jake, who think anyone who makes a mistake deserves to have their life ruined, who cause the real trouble.
  • Revenge isn't worth it. In the sequel, Emma Lawton finds this out the hard way.
• At Least I Admit It: Nate is upfront about being a subject of Simon's website, and it's observed that "He's never pretended to be anything other than exactly who he is."
• Awkward Poetry Reading: Janae reads an excerpt from Walt Whitman's poem 'Song of Myself' for Simon's vigil. Nate describes it as a "weird, rambling" poem and says that her voice was shaking the whole time.
• Axes at School: The whole premise is one- a murder occurs at school and a group of teenagers are the prime suspects, so not only do they have to deal with everyone suspecting them, they also have to deal with the idea that one of them is capable of cold-blooded murder.
• Because You Were Nice to Me: Addy befriends Janae, Simon's only friend, after finding her crying in the bathroom. This makes Janae unwilling to plant the stolen epi pens on Addy, so not knowing what else to do she frames Nate instead. When Jake comes over to confront her about this, Addy gets their conversation on tape.
• Berserk Button: Cooper being publically outed turns out to be this for Mikhail Powers, the journalist making a series about the murder and who also is gay and was outed against his will. His coverage of the investigation changes abruptly.
  • Jake also claims that Addy cheating on him hits a button with him because his mother cheated on his dad once. Although, reading between the lines, the problems mainly came from his dad, with his controlling nature and passive-aggressive handling of the situation; pretending to forgive his wife but then throwing it in her face when it suits him.
  • One Of Us Is Back reveals there was a lot more to the situation than that. The man Mrs Riordan had an affair with was Jake's biological father, and they planned on going away together with him.
• Big Damn Heroes: Cooper, when Jake catches Addy recording him and decides to kill her. Cooper lays him out with a punch.
• Big Secret: Simon specialised in rooting these out and publishing them on his gossip app, About That, revelling especially in taking down the popular and powerful. The dirt he was about to publish on the Bayview Four, coupled with the fact that they were with him when he died, make them the main (only) suspects in his murder.
  • Nate is dealing drugs despite being on probation (not spoilered as it's not exactly a surprise).
  • Bronwyn got her A in Chemistry by cheating. She used a computer after the Chemistry teacher, only to find that he hadn't logged out, and copied his answer key.
  • Cooper is gay.
  • Addy cheated on her boyfriend.
  • Simon is caught at his own game when Jake Riordan finds out he fixed the Junior Prom vote so he'd end up on the court. The threat of being humiliated as he's done to so many others triggers the events of the story.
  • The sequel concerns a game of Truth or Dare, in which the next "player" has twenty-four hours to accept the Dare, or their Big Secret will be texted to the whole school. This is intended to force people to accept the Dare, thus allowing Brandon's murder to look like a dare gone wrong.
  • In One Of Us Is Back, it's revealed that Jake killed his biological father. Simon was a witness, and instead of doing what he knew was the right thing and tell somebody, he decided to keep it a secret in order to have something over Jake.
• Big Sister Instinct: In One Of Us Is Next, Phoebe and Emma realize that Owen must have continued the game when Emma backed out. They decide not to tell their lawyer or mother this because Owen would get expelled if not arrested, he ghosted Jared when Brandon died, and everyone would know that the latest genius prodigy was capable of ruining lives. Emma is already facing everyone's hatred and gossip, and she doesn't want to wish that on another person. Not again after how much harm it caused.
• Bittersweet Ending: One Of Us Is Next ends this way. Jared is arrested while Knox and Maeve save everyone at Eli's wedding by getting the bomb out of there. Emma, however, confesses that she started the game to save Phoebe from being implicated, and it implies that the family will be more torn apart than before while getting legal representation for Emma. Emma and Phoebe's relationship is more strained than it was, though they decide to not reveal that their little brother probably continued the game, so as not to ruin his life.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: When it’s revealed to Nate Simon targeted him for hooking up with Keely he admits he almost forgot about that
• The Chain of Harm: This is what started the game in the sequel. Brandon caused an accident that killed Phoebe and Emma's father, but the incident was hushed up in exchange for settlement money. Phoebe slept with her sister's ex Derek, and Derek in a crisis of conscience confessed to Emma. Emma decided to get revenge on her sister. and Brandon by restarting the game, while posing as Phoebe online. When she backed out, Owen found out and decided to continue it in her place to avenge their father. This leads to Brandon's death, lots of people becoming humiliated with their secrets splayed out at school, Maeve suffering a cancer scare from the stress, and Eli and Ashton being nearly killed at their wedding rehearsal via a bomb. Emma herself admits that this was really stupid and hurt people she considered friends, and worst of all, Phoebe was nearly arrested for her crimes.
• Cool Big Sis: Ashton for Addy. Spots right away that Jake, while outwardly perfect, is a control freak. Moves back home to support Addy when she's a murder suspect, helps her break out of her shell after Jake dumps her, and helps her talk through her feelings about it. Joins in with the investigation, passes vital information along to Eli when he's representing Nate and finally invites Addy to come to live with her. In the sequel, she and Eli get married.
  • Bronwyn to Maeve, with heavy doses of Big Sister Instinct, although it's also inverted with Maeve doing a lot to help her in the investigation.
  • In the sequel, Knox has five older sisters. The one we meet, Keirsten, clearly thinks the world of her little brother.
  • Also in the sequel, Phoebe realises that she has failed to be this to her brother. This failure ultimately leads to the ending.
• Cool Old Lady: Cooper's grandmother. Warm, loving and matter-of-fact, it's strongly implied she knew Cooper is gay before he was ready to admit it, encouraging but not forcing him to be honest about it. When the investigation forces him to come out to his family, she's there for him both during and after.
• Compromising Call: When Addy records Jake incriminating himself, Cooper (who is parked outside, but not in on the recording plan), calls her to find out what's going on. Unfortunately, Addy forgot to silence her phone...
• Dirty Coward: Emma is this in One of Us is Next. She could have confronted her sister Phoebe for sleeping with Derek, her ex, the day after the breakup. Instead, she held it inside her and decided to weaponize it against Phoebe for the purpose of starting the Truth or Dare game. When the games got worse, implicating people and leading to Brandon's murder, rather than go to the cops or her mother, Emma decided that ghosting the real killer and drinking away her problems was the solution. Emma confessing to the cops to save Phoebe from being implicated for her crimes is the first sign of her growing out of this and admitting that she went too far. Even worse, her little brother Owen realized what she was doing and continued the game, only stopping after Brandon died, showing he was taking after her.
• Disproportionate Retribution: What people tend to receive as a result of Simon posting their secrets online. His "murder" was really a suicide staged to ruin the lives of the four students he arranged to be in detention with him.
  • The Bayview Four were targeted by the real killer because of this. Simon hated Bronwyn because she and Leah once told him the wrong deadline for the Model UN, which he decided was deliberate. Cooper got him uninvited to an after-Prom party. And Nate dared to hook up with Keely. For this, he decided they deserved to have their lives ruined.
  • Jake decides Addy deserves to have her life ruined with a false murder charge because she cheated on him.
  • In the backstory, Simon ruined Leah's life with gossip about her sex life because she and Bronwyn told him the wrong deadline for the Model UN, which he decided was deliberate.
  • In the sequel, Jared Jackson wants to kill Eli and his whole wedding party, with a bomb because Eli's biggest case involved getting his Corrupt Cop brother arrested, resulting in both his parents' deaths due to stress-related health problems and an overdose. Tragic? Yes. Grounds for mass murder? No!
• The Dog Was the Mastermind:
  • One of the masterminds behind the conspiracy in the second book is the twelve-year-old-brother of Phoebe, one of the narrators.
  • In the third book, the revenge plot is masterminded by Evie, the chipper new waitress who works with Phoebe and only has about a dozen lines before The Reveal that her father is the murdered Alexander Alton.
• Driven to Suicide: Turns out Simon actually killed himself, but planned the whole thing out to maximize the chances of at least one of the Bayview Four going down for his murder.
• Engineered Public Confession: There is no evidence of Jake's guilt, so Addy convinces Janae to talk to him about it, with Addy recording in the next room. They get the goods, but Jake catches Addy and decides to kill her, only to be stopped by Cooper. The attempted murder presumably renders the legality of the recording moot.
• Entitled to Have You: Simon's attitude to Keely, Cooper's girlfriend, in spite of her lack of interest in him. Nate is explicitly included in the Bayview Four because she hooked up with him.
• Exact Words: When Keely finds Kris' contact information on his phone, Cooper covers by saying Kris is a guy he met a few weeks back. She points out that it's usually girls who spell Kris with a K, and he says Kris is German. To the reader who knows by now that Cooper's cheating but not with whom, this sounds like total lies, but is in fact all true: Kris is a German man, with whom Cooper is cheating.
• Fallen Hero: "Hero" might be a strong word, but Simon started his gossip blog (a few years before the book) to impress his aloof former best friend Jake and expose a sleazy jock who was anonymously sending girls unsolicited sexting messages. Before long, though, he was exposing harmless personal secrets and gleefully ruining people's lives just so he could feel important.
• Fire-Forged Friends: The "Bayview Four" become this, as a result of being murder suspects, as well as their network of friends and siblings. Their lack of faith in the police investigation convinces them to solve Simon's murder themselves, especially after Nate is wrongly arrested.
• Foreshadowing: When investigating Simon's online persona, AnarchiSK, Maeve finds a 4Chan post where he criticized the perpetrator of a recent school shooting on their lack of originality. He invites people to surprise him when they "take a bunch of asshole lemmings with them." This foreshadows that his murder was actually suicide, designed at ruining other people's lives in the process.
• From Bad to Worse: The circumstances that lead to the Bayview Four being murder suspects. Addy, Bronwyn, Cooper, Nate and Simon are pranked into getting detention by having phones planted in their bags. A rearending incident outside the window makes the teacher leave the room to help. Simon drinks his water and has an allergic reaction. Nate and Bronwyn search his bag, only to find his Epi-Pen is missing. Cooper runs to the nurse's office, only to find those Epi-Pens are missing too. As a result, the paramedics are unable to save Simon and he dies. The police don't believe for one second that any of the above is a coincidence and decide that one of them must be the killer. Then it turns out Simon had dirt on each of them ready to post...
• Good Bad Girl: In One of Us is Next, Phoebe Lawton is kind, friendly, loving and protective of her little brother, and most definitely not a virgin. Somewhat subverted as she slept with her sister Emma's ex.
• Gossipy Hens: Simon, obviously. Popular kid Olivia as well, telling Cooper about how everyone is talking about the motives Simon posted about being exposed, and gleefully spreading the word when Cooper's sexuality is first being leaked.
• Green-Eyed Monster: Simon has a huge crush on Keely, Cooper's girlfriend. Although Cooper is officially made a part of the Bayview Four for blacklisting Simon from a party, this probably isn't a coincidence. Nate is explicitly included in the Bayview Four for hooking up with her. More generally, Simon is secretly envious of the popular kids despite his open contempt for them and those who worship them.
  • It's also implied that Jake changed Cooper's secret from being gay to using steroids before leaking them out of jealousy about Cooper's baseball talent attracting scouts.
• Heel–Face Door-Slam: An ambiguous example, with the kids speculating that Simon regretted his decision in the last moments of his life (due to the expressions that went across his face at the time) and the shock of it might have made him reevaluate his life if he'd survived.
• Held Back in School: In One of Us is Next, we learn that Maeve has been held back a year due to missing so much school as a kid as a result of her leukaemia. Knox started school a year late because he was small for his age and his parents were concerned he'd be at a disadvantage. This does not help his "Well Done, Son" Guy tendencies.
• Heteronormative Crusader: Cooper's dad, a good old boy from Mississippi, is one of these. There's mention at one point of him railing that "Normal guys shouldn't have to put up with that crap in the locker room" about an openly gay baseball player. Which is why Cooper is so anxious to keep his sexuality a secret.
• Hypocrite: Simon acts as if his gossip app is a public service, exposing people's nasty secrets, when in fact he just enjoys the power that comes from tearing people down. When he talks to Bronwyn at the beginning, he gives the example of a boy he's recently exposed who taped girls without their knowledge: surely people are better off knowing what he's up to? It doesn't seem to occur to him to actually do some good by taking that information to the police.
  • It's noted that Simon loathed the popular kids and those who tried to be popular, and was continually contemptuous about them, but he secretly wanted to be popular himself and rigged the Junior Prom vote.
  • When Addy is being Slut Shamed by most if not all of his friends, Cooper expresses disgust, noting that they didn't raise a fuss about Luis cheating on his girlfriend, or Vanessa trying to give various boys with girlfriends handjobs.
  • Emma in the sequel berates her sister for doing selfish things impulsively without thinking about how her actions have consequences. She said this after she'd helped set up the Truth or Dare game in order to get revenge and was going to humiliate and hurt a lot of innocent teenagers, which is arguably worse because it was done with malice and premeditation. It takes her actions nearly resulting in her sister being implicated for her to fess up.
• I Am Not Left-Handed: Cooper is left-handed but writes with his right hand, because his father has told him not to waste his left on "Crap that don't matter," meaning anything but baseball. Counts as a Establishing Character Moment as it tells us how important baseball is to Cooper as well as his "Well Done, Son" Guy tendencies.
• Important Haircut: Addy after being exposed and dumped for cheating on her boyfriend, and ostracised by her social group, she cuts off her very long, natural blonde hair into a pixie and dyes it purple. This represents finally giving up on getting Jake back and marks the start of her Character Development.
• Incompatible Orientation: Keely, Cooper's girlfriend, is the most beautiful girl in school, and, for the most part, a genuinely sweet person to boot. Cooper's been telling her he's "old-fashioned" and waiting for marriage to cover for the fact that he's gay.
• Innocent Innuendo: When Nate and Bronwyn start calling each other, he invites her over to "see my lizard." After a moment of uncertain silence, he clarifies that he means his actual lizard, a bearded dragon named Stan Lee. "Actual Lizard" becomes a Running Gag between them.
• Inspector Javert: The cops investigating the kids get this treatment; interfering in their lives and being largely convinced that they're guilty.
• Irony: Simon used his app, About That, to create power for himself by keeping the school in fear of having their secrets exposed. He hurt a lot of people with it, resulting in one Attempted Suicide. In the process he isolated himself from any potential friends, becoming a miserable loner with only one friend he treated like crap. It becomes clear throughout the book that he didn't hurt anyone with his app so much as himself. Up to and including the suicide.
• Jaw Drop: Vanessa is described in this way when Nate turns her Slut-Shaming around on her.
• Karma Houdini: By a mutual silent decision on Phoebe and Emma's part in One Of Us Is Next, they decide not to reveal that their little brother Owen likely kept the game going to Emma's layer because of a specific spelling error they knew he made, spelling "bizarre" as "bazaar," identifies him in the chat logs with Jared while posing as Phoebe. If Owen were implicated, he would be subject to the same criminal investigation as Emma and likely his life would be ruined as well.
• Karma Houdini Warranty: One Of Us Is Next' has a few cases of this.
  • First, there's this with Emma. It's mentioned a few times that if she knew that her ex had slept with her sister, she ought to have confronted Phoebe about it when Derek confessed to her. Instead, in Revenge Before Reason mode on learning a classmate had led to her father being killed, she decided to restart the games with an unknown individual. It becomes Gone Horribly Wrong: Jared ends up killing Brandon instead of humiliating him, Maeve and Knox get a humiliating truth told about them, and Jules and Sean become complicit in murder. Emma starts drinking excessively to deal with the stress and is implied to have attempted suicide. Realizing she can't deal with the guilt any longer, she confesses when her actions implicate Phoebe and spills the story to a lawyer. Everyone knows that she's facing criminal charges, and her reputation is shot at school because while her sister hooking up with her ex is bad, being complicit in murder is worse. Phoebe inwardly notes that she can't forgive her sister but decides she's been punished enough.
  • Jules and Sean were involved with one of the Dares gone wrong, and Sean ended up slut-shaming Phoebe for hooking up with Emma's ex. It turns out they were there the night Brandon did his dare and lied to the police. Jules mentions at the end that they're cooperating, and it's a relief that Jared is the bigger concern.
• The Loins Sleep Tonight: In One of Us is Next, this is the secret that is revealed about Knox when Maeve ignores her Truth or Dare text, resulting in Knox being humiliated and not speaking to Maeve for a while. When it happened, they simply took it as proof they were Better as Friends. At the end, he and Phoebe kiss, resulting in an embarrassing situation that at least lets him point out that all systems are go this time.
• Lovable Jock: Cooper and Luis, who don't really bully anyone, are good friends to each other and mature further after graduating, although both have their flaws (Luis cheated on his girlfriend and Cooper once had Simon uninvited from a party out of panic when he thought Simon knew he was gay).
• Missing Mom: Nate's mother was a bipolar cocaine addict who's been missing for years as the novel opens. Nate has told people she's dead, figuring it's likely true by now anyway. She returns, having recently cleaned up, when she hears he's a murder suspect.
• Moral Myopia: Simon defends his gossip app by saying they "bring it on themselves" by doing shady things. He refuses to consider that the gossip app itself is pretty shady. As is rigging the Junior Prom vote. And staging your suicide to ruin four people's lives.
  • Jake Riordan is on board with the fake murder plot to get revenge on Addy for cheating on him by ruining her life with a false murder charge. Because getting someone convicted for a murder they didn't commit is in no way worse than cheating.
  • Jared Jackson in One of Us is Next. Jared's brother is a Corrupt Cop arrested as a result of Eli's biggest case. Both of his parents are dead as a result. Which is sad and all, but doesn't exactly justify his plan to kill Eli and his whole wedding party with a bomb. It also doesn't seem to have occurred to him that his brother might bear some responsibility for sending innocent people to jail.
• Never My Fault: Simon delighted in using his gossip app to tear people down, and revelled in the power this gave him. The fact that this is the reason he has no friends and that maybe he bears some responsibility for his own misery doesn't seem to have occurred to him.
  • His old grudge against Leah and Bronwyn is an example. They once (accidentally) told him the wrong deadline for the Model UN, resulting in him missing the cutoff. Apparently the idea of looking the information up himself didn't occur to him, and years later he's still angry enough to ruin their lives over it.
• Noble Demon: The mastermind of the third book is willing and even eager to punish and kill certain people, but is determined to avoid killing any innocent bystanders or people who have done wrongs that don’t meet a certain threshold.
• Non-Protagonist Resolver: Downplayed but Kris is the one who first hits on the idea that Simon killed himself.
• Plot Allergy: Simon is killed with peanut oil, which he is allergic to, in his water.
• Police Are Useless: And how. Granted, there would be no plot if the police did an even half-competent job of investigating Simon's murder, but this novel reads like McManus has a personal grudge. Every time we see the police, they're being played like fiddles and out-copped by Bronwyn's fifteen-year-old sister. It's implied that they don't care who really did it, just who they can blame it on, for example when Nate is told early on that he's "the obvious outlier and scapegoat." Sure enough, he's the one arrested on evidence that could easily have been planted, and was.
  • Jump right into being abusive when they make clear They will use their investigation to forcibly out Cooper.
  • Less prominent in One of Us is Next as the main characters aren't suspects, but near the end one of the detectives from the first book is seen again, still being played like a fiddle, still apparently taking what known murderers tell him at face value.
  • By the third book, the police are on such a consistent streak of being wrong that the trope is name-dropped.
• Revenge by Proxy: Implied by how Simon posted an utterly insulting and humiliating post about Maeve (whose sister he resented) that made her too embarrassed to go to any social events for months afterwards.
• Serious Business: Cooper's little brother keeps track of how many friends he has on FaceBook and is deeply upset about how many of them go away because of the scandal.
• Shout-Out: Nate flips through TV channels and comes across a new show about a kid and a snake.
• Slut-Shaming: A recurring theme in both novels, unsurprising given that the plots revolve around having secrets exposed.
  • Addy gets this treatment and loses all her friends when it is revealed that she cheated on her boyfriend.
  • Leah had her life ruined with this in the backstory by Simon, resulting in her Attempted Suicide.
  • A more sympathetic version (albeit one that an adult Nate still admits was pretty harsh in the third book) comes when Nate gives Vanessa (one of the main ones who was Slut-Shaming Addy and Gay-bashing Cooper a "The Reason You Suck" Speech which touches upon how she is always trying to give hand jobs to everyone around her, even people she doesn't know, asking if there's one boy in the cafeteria who she hasn't done that to. and only one boy, one of the nerds, raises his hand to that.
  • In the sequel, Phoebe gets this when the Truth or Dare game reveals that she slept with her sister's ex. This was set up deliberately by the person running the game to make sure people take the Dare.
• Spanner in the Works: Addy reaching out to Janae after finding her crying makes Janae unwilling to frame her, and allows Addy to get her to open up, ultimately resulting in the truth coming to light.
• "Strangers on a Train"-Plot Murder: This is what's happening in One of Us is Next. Except that, as it's done online, one of the members is confused about who their buddy is. Complicated further when their original buddy backs out, but someone else takes over without either original knowing.
• Suicide, Not Murder: The essence of Simon's plan. He wanted to kill himself, and he decided to take down four people who he deemed deserving of it at the same time, so he made it look like a murder so they'd have their lives ruined.
• Teen Pregnancy: One of the many secrets exposed on Simon's blog in the past. The girl's parents kicked her out of the house shortly afterwards.
• Thanatos Gambit: Simon's death. He wanted to kill himself and take a bunch of "asshole lemmings" with him, but with more originality than a simple shooting. Hence, his suicide is disguised as murder, and designed to implicate four innocent people.
• Those Two Girls: Bronwyn's friends Yumiko and Kate share most of their scenes and have similar personalities.
• Took a Level in Badass: Addy. Starts off with no persona outside of her boyfriend Jake, who we quickly learn is deeply controlling. After her infidelity comes out and he dumps her, she cuts her hair, takes up cycling, joins in Bronwyn's investigation, records Jake incriminating himself and survives a murder attempt.
• A Tragedy of Impulsiveness: Bronwyn cheating was something that just happened with no premeditation.
  The file was right in front of me in that moment and I took it.
• Unluckily Lucky: Nate's father considers falling off a roof and hitting his back this. It allowed him to qualify for disability payments at a time when he was an alcoholic who probably would have ended up unemployable in short order anyway.
• Weaponized Allergy: How Simon was killed, peanut oil in his drink.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: Cooper's father is thrilled that he's a star pitcher and has talent scouts interested. His pride over this doesn't fade even when his son is a murder suspect and accused of using steroids. When Cooper is outed as gay, however...
  • Knox, in the sequel. He has five older sisters but no brothers. His father, a self-made businessman with a construction company, sees him as a video game-obsessed wastrel and raves about a young employee, Nate, as if he'd rather have him as a son instead. He warms up after Knox helps catch a killer and prevents multiple deaths from a bomb.
• Wham Line: When the Bayview Four, minus Nate, get together to solve the mystery, they go over old posts from the person claiming to be the murderer. They're puzzled by one post claiming to have seen one of the detectives eat an entire box of doughnuts by himself, because that never happened. But Addy told Jake it did.
  • When Bronwyn finds one of the people involved in the rear-ending that made the teacher leave the room, he reveals that he and the other guy were paid to do it... by Simon.
  • In the sequel, Phoebe and Emma are going through the chat logs to find proof that someone besides Emma was communicating with Jared after Emma called off the plan. They find some changes in grammar supporting this: so far so good. But then they find another mistake: "bazaar" instead of "bizarre". The same mistake their little brother made earlier.
• Who Murdered the Asshole: Revolves around the murder of Simon Kelleher, a high school student who ran a highly damaging gossip app, and delighted in using it to tear others down. He was murdered while in detention with four other students, each of whom he was about to publish some major dirt on. As the murderer clearly had to be in the room at the time, the police investigation focuses pretty much exclusively on the "Bayview Four" but, as others point out, there were plenty of people who might have wanted him dead. he killed himself.
  • Similarly with the victim of One of Us is Next. Brandon Webber is a spoiled, misogynist Jerkass who killed Phoebe's father and got off scot-free. Somewhat subverted in that Emma admitted that she didn't want him dead and started drinking heavily to deal with the guilt. Owen, who had continued the game after Emma refused to, said that murder wasn't supposed to happen. Phoebe herself admits that she didn't hate Brandon enough for that.
• Wholesome Cross Dresser: Aidan Wu, one of the many kids Simon exposed on his website, causing him to have a nervous breakdown.

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"Everyone's got something to hide, right?"

— Nate