Inside cover blurb:
“Kay Donovan may have skeletons in her closet, but the past is past, and she’s reinvented herself entirely. Now she’s a star soccer player whose group of gorgeous friends run their private school with effortless popularity and acerbic wit. But when a girl’s body is found in the lake, Kay’s carefully constructed life begins to topple.
The dead girl has left Kay a computer-coded scavenger hunt, which, as it unravels, begins to implicate suspect after suspect, until Kay herself is in the crosshairs of a murder investigation. But if Kay’s finally backed into a corner, she’ll do what it takes to survive. Because at Bates Academy, the truth is something you make…not something that happened.”
-from publisher
Thoughts:
*Before I start this review, let me just say, the Supernatural fandom really does have a gif for everything. This was the exact gesture I was looking for.*
I think boarding school mysteries are my new thing. I feel like I’ve read a lot of them lately and I don’t plan on stopping any time soon.
I actually bought People Like Us on a whim- people who know me know that I don’t usually buy books because then I usually won’t end up reading them. But I read this one and I really enjoyed it too!
After finding a dead girl in the lake of the school, Kay gets blackmailed into outing all of her friends’ secrets, in order to keep her own past buried. The story is overall really good, and I had an idea of who did it, but couldn’t quite figure out the whole thing, which is important to me in a mystery. And there are a few different layers too, like what really happened to Kay before she came to the school.
I will say, the actual ending of the story was a bit unsatisfactory. It seemed to be building to a more thrilling conclusion…that just wasn’t there. There were also a few lulls in the plot, like when Kay goes to stay at a friend’s house over a holiday break. It’s supposed to add background, I get that, but I don’t think all the dots lined up in the best way.
Plus: Great set up, almost Pretty Little Liars-esque. The whole blackmail plot is really well done.
Minus: Almost the whole package, but not quite. Some of the plot points could have been stronger, I thought.
If you like this book, try:
As I Descended by Robin Talley- A gender-swapped, queer retelling of Macbeth, set at boarding school. Similar to People Like Us, everyone has secrets, but with maybe just a touch of the supernatural.