Dana Mele

"Mean Girls meets Donna Tartt's The Secret History with a little bit of Riverdale mixed in. So yeah, it's epic."--HelloGiggles "In People Like Us, Dana Mele delivers the Gossip Girl meets Pretty Little Liars young adult novel you've been waiting for."--Bustle 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. Debut author Dana Mele has written a taut, sophisticated suspense novel that will keep readers guessing until the very end.

People Like Us

"When a girl is found dead at her elite boarding school, soccer-star Kay Donovan follows a scavenger hunt which implicates suspects increasingly close to her, unraveling her group of popular friends and perfectly constructed life"--

arwen

Megan

“People Like Us” by Dana Mele is a roller coaster ride from start to finish. The story begins with a headfirst dive into the lives of boarding school girls Kay, Brie, Tai, Maddy, and Tricia when it seems impossible to keep track of each of the different characters. At first, I had a hard time telling who was important and who I needed to remember. But down the road, I realized this was done intentionally and helped to submerge me further into the story. There isn’t any expository build-up, which might not normally not interest me. But it works incredibly well in this case, because by page three the girls find a body in a lake on their boarding school’s campus.

READ MY FULL REVIEW AT ABOUT MAGAZINE: http://about-online.com/books/book-re...

Alexa M

this was a damn good YA thriller. totally did not see anything coming!

*3.5 

i'm highkey disappointed but like it was alright, i didn't regret reading it and all that however, still severely underwhelmed. i read this book looking for an easy sunbathing read, and that's what i got so i didn't expect too much but then lesbians happened and my expectations went up and then went down again when the book ended. 

the way the book was written was nice though, i liked it. it was vague in all the right places and it captured the things happening in the story in a way that's both intriguing and easy to understand, and i liked that. 

the characters were also one of the stronger points of the book, i definitely liked the main character, kay, which is amazing since most pov characters are annoying, but no - kay's a goodie. i found myself empathizing with pretty much anyone that got their narratives shown off, so basically the author did a good job in making you like the characters. however, i didn't get attached to any of the characters either - they were just simply likeable enough for me to not drop the book. basically, characters were positively okay. 

the resolution to the story was kind of like... meh. it's not BAD or unsurprising or anything it's just like "oh, okay then" like it was just fine and the reasoning was also just y'know, fine. 

tl;dr- the book was just... okay. worth it for a quick read but it was just..... eh. queer girls though, something i support.

brianna

"resilient is the wrong word for someone who attracts tragedy like a magnet but survives to watch her loved ones die."


sapphic dark academia murder mystery? yeah im sold

Emelie

Elisa Bieg

What a frustrating book to review.

It was really intriguing and pretty well-constructed for about 3/4 through — some of the characters were maybe not fully shaped and we only got a hint of what they were like, but the main players were clear and vivid; and the way the mystery was unfolding was perfect, shedding enough light to make us feel like we were about to add a piece to the puzzle, but adding to the mystery as well.

It was shaping up to be a good YA thriller: suspenseful, making you kind of suspect everyone, but also sort of not making you want to, because you’ve formed a connection to so many of the possible suspects. 
Some of the narration felt uneven, but I can usually put up with that when I’m enjoying the story.

Then, around 3/4 in, it all shifted gears. The change was jarring, and it honestly felt like it was two different books pasted together. It stayed that way until the end, piling up reveals and background all at once, like they just had to be gotten out of the way.

I didn’t enjoy that.

So now all the details I was ready to brush aside for a good thriller come screeching back at me, and I can no longer ignore them. 

I’m giving this 3 STARS.
It’s not bad, but in the end I didn’t enjoy it enough to want to keep it or recommend it. 

If you are looking for thrillers to read on the beach, this might work. But if you’re looking to fill the emptiness until the last 
  Truly Devious
 book comes out, this will probably leave you unsatisfied, and possibly rolling your eyes.

lily hazel

read three chapters. middle-grade novel with a suicide in there to spice shit up (it did not).

Kailey Rios

this was better than i thought it would be but it definitely wasn’t my favorite.

i read it pretty quickly because i was eager to find out who the killer was, although the reveal was a little anticlimactic. 

there honestly wasn’t a character i really liked, they were kind of all horrible people in one way or another but i did like all the queer girl representation.

overall, it was kind of meh.


  3 stars

jess

For the most part, I liked People Like Us, but I was expecting more out of it than I got. My favourite tropes include murder at elite colleges/boarding schools and sick romanticization a la The Secret History, so I thought I would like it more than I did. 

I think my main issue with this book was that the characters were not as quite as fleshed out as I wished they were. I'm used to these kinds of books having very morally grey, memorable characters, but most in People Like Us just seemed like terrible people, and all Kay's friends that weren't Brie were, to me, very one-dimensional; I could barely tell them apart. I felt like Kay's relationship with Brie was quite unhealthy but it seemed to be moving in a direction where they could better communicate with each other. 

I do have to say that the book was very atmospheric. As for the thriller aspect - I was definitely guessing until the end, but nothing was as tense as I wanted it to be. All in all a good book, especially if you want f/f content, but as a thriller, somewhat unremarkable.

paulina bug

** spoiler alert **
           The book was pretty alright up until the ending. So Nola did ALL that just for revenge on some girls for some bullying? Like I get that Kay and her friends were awful to her, but then she goes and kills two girls (not even the girls who were mean to her but two girls who basically had nothing to do with it) because they called her names? It just didn’t really make sense or add up 🤷🏻‍♀️

Amanda Kordeliski

I thought this book started out really strong but hit a wall in the middle and fizzled out from there. For me, Kay was never a sympathetic main character but too weak to be the anti-hero. The tangle of weird hook-ups and romance sprinkled through the book didn't fit with the plot threads. I also have an issue with the uber-wealthy giving up and withdrawing from school with a simple "I know you are doing x" but no tangible proof. It doesn't fit with the atmosphere Mele built at the boarding school. It was easy to see the resolution from the time the blackmail started and I was disappointed the ending was so predictable.

Kate B-L

Suspenseful and creepy with unique and real characters, definitely worth the afternoon it takes to read it.

nelly sanchez

5★


I'm gonna be honest, I only picked this book up because it was a thriller with a gay mc, and let me tell you the book just kept giving. It was such an interesting thriller + the private prep school academia vibes + mean girls + a gorgeous character arc?? Everything was just so enjoyable and I had such a fun time reading this book. Although I "predicted" who the killer was, I was constantly cycling through different suspects, bc I could never really be sure of anything and it was GLORIOUS. I highly recommend it to anyone who likes a good thriller.

**Also I'm still trying to figure out if the title is people like us as in "people similar to us" or "people enjoy us" because honestly, the double meaning works out perfectly.

Steffi

Enjoyable, fast-paced, and gripping murder mystery at a prestigious boarding school. Although, 3/4ths in I did start to zone out because the storyline slowed down quite a bit. The ending could have been summed up slightly better with more details, but overall a decent read.

Grace O'Callaghan

** spoiler alert **
           ‘People Like Us’ is an extremely entertaining story set at Bates Academy boarding school. We follow Kay as she and her friends discover a dead body in the lake. At first they think it’s a suicide, but now it’s seems it was a murder. Kay came to Bates to give herself a fresh start to get away from her past, but the dead girl left her a website that could destroy that image and her friends. Now Kay is involved in the investigation as a suspect. Will she find out who the killer is before she’s the one arrested?

I have to start off by saying that this was such a fun book to read. I absolutely love books set in boarding schools (ahem, Hogwarts) and I loved the idea of a murder mystery at a school. However whilst it was entertaining and made sense, the ending was pretty weak.

None of the characters in this book are very likeable, but I still somehow managed to kind of like Kay. At first when we’re introduced to Kay and her friends they seem to be the shallow mean girls. Some of them stay that way but Kay’s character developed quite a bit.

It’s not really that relevant to the storyline but Kay was bisexual and I didn’t know about this going in. I was pleasantly surprised by this as it said nothing about in the synopsis. I know this seems like nothing, but I do want more queer books obviously, but I’m glad it wasn’t marketed as ‘queer mystery novel’. They didn’t make Kay bi and only focus on marketing that to get more of an audience. I just really appreciated that they didn’t milk that to get people to read the book.

Some of the other characters were interesting like Nola, Bri and Spencer but apart from them the rest were very forgettable. The other girls in Kay’s group were flat cardboard cut out mean girls. I would’ve loved to have seen a bit more depth to them.

Despite this not being the best mystery in the world, it was still a very entertaining plot. I felt it was so obvious as to who the killer was. Nola was helping Kay so much and knew how to solve the riddles as she made them up. I’m not going to list every time Nola did something that hinted she was the killer but I caught on very quickly, which wasn’t good. I haven’t read many mystery thrillers but if it seems obvious to me who doesn’t know the format of mysteries, it must be bad. 
Nevertheless I was still curious as to how and why Nola did it. I was a little shocked that she killed Jessica because she was convenient to frame Kay. I thought it was a nice touch as the police were focused on who was connected to Jessica and not the reason she was killed.

As much as the ending was pretty bad I appreciated that there was a punishment for Kay and her friends as while Nola murdered someone, that doesn’t justify the horrible things they did. They won’t get into the colleges they wanted and I’m glad that they all learned the lesson that actions have consequences.

While it was a pretty weak mystery, it was too entertaining that I couldn’t give it below a three stars. I’d recommend it if your looking for a bi main character, a boarding school setting and/or if you’re just starting to read mysteries. You probably shouldn’t read this if you’re really familiar with the genre, unless you’re looking for an easy mystery.

Tiffany Robinson

All the characters in this book were pretty horrible and I can't think of one that wasn't to bad. Also the killer was pretty easy to spot a mile away. Other then that I did really enjoyed the book. It was a fast read and I was really interested in how the story was going to play out.

Caitlyn DeRouin

3.5 stars.

When I'm reading a mystery book something I enjoy (sometimes, not all of the time) is an unreliable narrator and Kay was exactly that. She often contradicted herself and her actions, which make it all the more interesting. Did she or didn't she? You wonder that throughout the entire book because you really can't trust anything that she says or does. I do find that interesting in a narrator for a mystery novel, I will say that I did not like Kay. There was something about her that rubbed me the wrong way, I found her to be very flighty and whiny and she also really had no consideration for others feelings. And then there was the whole situation with her brother and best friend, which I won't give away, but that really was bothersome. With that being said, it actually didn't bother me reading the book from her point of view as much as I thought it would, mostly because it really lends itself to this kind of story. There were times where she did remind me of Alison Dilaruents at the beginning of Pretty Little Lairs (though I ended up liking Alison a lot more than I liked Kay) which makes sense since this book was marketed to fans of the series.

I had my suspicions early on in the story as to who the person behind everything was, it fluctuated between two different characters for the majority of the book, but once we hit the last 100 or so pages I figured out who it was and I was really looking forward to the characters finding it out. While I saw the reveal coming, the reasoning behind it I didn't see coming and that really did surprise me.

Overall I thought that it was an enjoyable book, especially if you like mystery books set in high schools.

Candyce Kirk

Wow, this book was so much better than I thought it was going to be. It kept me on the edge of my seat and I didn’t want to put it down. It took me quite awhile before I figured out who was behind everything, but I did know before the ending.

My full review will be posted on thebookdutchesses.com at the end of the month.

Gitte Bruyninckx

People like us has been the first book in a while that has been able to capture my attention away from my uni studies. Filled with plottwists, interesting characters and amazing character developments, it didn't matter that I figured out the twist with the killer, since it turned out that wasn't the biggest surprise of the book after all...

laura

I would give this book 3.5 stars*

I thought this was a super fast pace mystery that really hooked me. It def reminds me lot of both 13reasons why and pretty little liars. The mystery kept me engaged. I had a hard time becoming emotional invested in most of majority of these characters because so many of them were unlikeable especially the lead. But the mystery kept me so engaged. I thought the actions of the police made me so angry but I guess I could see that happens in real life at points. I do see the theme "every action has a consquence even if you don't notice the very similar to shows like 13 reasons why. I would def read more by this author in the future.

Mollee Clingenpeel

4/5 Stars

Full review on my blog: https://literarymermaid.wordpress.com...

I loved this book so much. It was such a fun and wild ride, I could not put it down. I read the majority of it in less than 24 hours. I thoroughly enjoyed this entire ride. Our unreliable narrator, our unreliable friendships. All the twists and turns throughout were really really good. The only thing that fell flat for me was the ending honestly. I felt like the big reveal at the end was the least shocking of all the other mini reveals throughout. I definitely could have guessed who the culprit was, however I was led astray a few different times, and I never would have guessed the reasoning behind why the murderer did it. That part threw me for a loop. I also was confused by Kay's ending after the reveal. Unsure of what actually happened there, but I guess that might have been the point? Have the reader draw their own conclusions? 

All in all I loved People Like Us, it was a fun, fast read that kept me guessing despite a lot of "textbook" mystery plot lines. If you're looking for an easy thriller that won't leave you completely heart broken and asking "what did I just read?" I would definitely recommend People Like Us.

Justine Rose

Thinking back, this might be more of a 3.5 star book, for a few reasons, mainly that it just wasn't that memorable. The ending was predictable, they didn't seem to explore enough suspects (this would have been fine if it were more a surprise who was behind it) and while the revenge website aspect was the most interesting part, there didn't seem to be any real consequences.
Still a fun read!

Elaine

I really enjoyed this thrilling ride of a book. Although the characters were not the most likable they felt real. The ending left me a bit dissapointed but otherwise I really enjoyed this book. I basically couldn't put it down.

People Like Us

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