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Alix Ordiway

Mrs. Cramer

College Comp Pd. 3

17 December 2021

Deceit and High School: A Proven Fatal Blend

“I’m the omniscient narrator,” (McManus 83). This is a quote from Simon, a not so

typical high schooler at Bayview High who ran the notorious gossip app “About That”. The main

characters each represented a common high school stereotype. They were as follows: Bronwyn

Rojas, the brain, Addy Prentiss, the beauty, Cooper Clay, the athlete, Nate Macauley, the

criminal, and lastly, Simon Kelleher, the outcast. This app exposed his peer’s darkest secrets in a

blog style. When he suddenly dies one afternoon while in detention, it makes sense that one of

them would have wanted him out of the picture, right? Especially when drafted posts containing

important secrets about each of the Bayview four, as the news began to call them, were found on

Simon’s computer following his death. Karen McManus’ One of Us is Lying answers this

grilling question using multiple points of view while simultaneously enhancing character

development through both internal dialogue and tone.

To begin, Addy is describing her reaction to finding out Simon wrote a post about her on

About That, exposing that she had cheated on her current boyfriend, a secret that was sure to

derail her long-term relationship (McManus 82). McManus uses internal dialogue to evolve

Addy’s character. The description of how she was shocked, struggling to breathe, and shaking

showed how scared she was of what was going to happen when people read the post. This blog

post also began to trigger a period of intense growth for Addy, as she is forced to get out of a

relationship that had been consuming most of her life for most of her time in high school.
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Similarly, after Simon’s funeral, Nate has to ride home with his parole officer, Officer Lopez

(McManus 93). This experience is described as extremely tense for Nate due to Lopez’s

suspicions of Nate’s involvement with Simon’s death and his recent parole violations. Nate is

internally acknowledging how strained the mood was of the ride home. This helps to show the

effect of the current situation on Nate as a developing character.

In addition, later in the book, Bronwyn playfully punches Nate in the arm after he tells

her he was indeed the one who stole baby Jesus in their Christmas play when they were in

elementary school (McManus 111). During this exchange, Bronwyn uses a playful tone with

Nate. This tone helps to reveal the soon-to-be budding romance building between two of the

main characters. Bronwyn was a stereotypical “nerd” and was known for taking everything

seriously, even outside of her academics, so the playful, flirty tone emphasized a change taking

place within her. In a like manner, Nate was always presented as a laid back, careless character,

until Bronwyn became more prominent in his life. These contradicting tones allow the reader to

predict that Nate and Bronwyn are falling for one another.

Next, a less than optimal outcome is narrated by Cooper himself. “I feel sick. I’ve

imagined breaking the news about Kris to my parents in dozens of ways, but none as flat-out and

horrible as this.” (McManus 250). This quote is from Cooper Clay, the “athlete” of the Bayview

four. During the investigation for Simon’s death, detectives found an encrypted draft that

appeared to be about to be posted to Simon’s app, About That. This post contained the news that

Cooper was seeing another man, named Kris. This was devastating to Cooper because he had not

yet come out to his friends, and even worse, his parents. In the quote, Cooper mentions how he

feels sick. This internal dialogue depicts how personal Simon’s posts could be, and how they

affected the people they were written about. Although Cooper could not come out on his own
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terms, McManus used this event to develop Cooper’s character by having him narrate his own

emotions about the situation.

To conclude, McManus’ One of Us is Lying uses multiple points of view, internal

dialogue, and tone to further improve the character’s development. Each of the main characters

underwent dramatic changes and growth throughout the plot of the book. These were due to

several factors. Most notable, was the dialogue choice of the author. McManus utilized

descriptive internal dialogues from the first-person point of view of four of the main characters,

Bronwyn Rojas, Addy Prentiss, Cooper Clay, and Nate Macauley. The tone of the characters also

worked concurrently with the dialogue to reveal differing aspects of the characters. This mix of

literary elements made One of Us is Lying an exceptional, addictive read that kept the audience

on their toes from chapter one. Although Simon was an outcast at Bayview High, he loved being

the center of attention, but from afar, silently ruining his classmate’s lives the best way he knew

how, revealing their secrets. This inclination would prove to be a disastrous one, as the

omniscient narrator is always all knowing.

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Work Cited
McManus, Karen M. One of Us is Lying. Harlow: Penguin Books, 2017. Print.