The book People Like Us is a murder mystery book about a girl named Katherine Donovan, who goes by Kay. On the night of a Halloween dance at Bates Academy, Kay and four of her friends discover the body of a girl. The girl turns out to be Jessica Lane, a quiet girl nobody knows much about. Shortly after the girls find Jessica, Kay receives an email from Jessica telling her to go to a website and expose her friends, or everyone will know what Kay did. Kay recruits a girl named Nola to help her, due to her wonderful computer skills, and has to spill her friend’s secrets, while trying to solve the mystery of who killed Jessica Lane.

Overall, the book was amazing. I loved the plot line, and the twists and turns throughout the book kept me hooked. Kay is written wonderfully but is written as a character you almost want to hate, but you can’t because of her main character role. Kay is a snobby, rude, uncaring high school girl. She makes fun of people often and talks frequently about how she only likes one of her four friends. Kay has character development that is brought up until the very end. There are friendships ended, little bits and pieces of romances blossoming, and friendships made and fixed. 

While I liked the book so much, there were flaws. I do typically go for mystery books, but I felt that finding out who killed Jessica wasn’t as much of a twist as I’d hoped. As soon as I’d hit the middle of the book, I’d predicted who it was. The book also ends with Kay telling us what she was hiding. Kay’s build-up of all of it wasn’t as well planned out as I had hoped. I had expected a bigger secret than what she was hiding. The book also focused deeply on characters who weren’t even that important for a chapter. The people who Kay threw under the bus over herself didn’t matter as much at the end of the book as I had expected. They sort of just disappeared.

Needless to say, the book was amazing nonetheless, and I would recommend it to anyone interested in a book to read for class, or even just for fun.