Kathryn's Reviews > People Like Us

People trust people who are like them.

People Like Us by Dana Mele….oh, what to say about this book that could ever do it justice?! Seriously, words fail me. I just fucking LOVE this novel. LOVE. IT. Like buy-every-copy-available-and-force-all-my-friends-to-read-it LOVE. Can my review just end here? No? Well, I guess I should tell you what it’s about….

Actually, the premise isn’t my fave. There’s my one criticism about this book. The blurb just doesn’t fully convey the story’s brilliance. But here you go, the premise as written on the inner flap: 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.

So People Like Us sounds like a Pretty Little Liars knockoff. It’s not. Well, it is if Pretty Little Liars were written by Donna Tartt or Tana French. Basically, it’s what Pretty Little Liars *should* have been. A snarky, spot-on commentary of adolescence in the internet age. The computer-coded scavenger hunt is actually a revenge website set-up by the dead girl to take down Kay’s inner circle. Like a cyber-version of A. Kay is forced to reveal her friend’s most intimate details or her own secret shame will be revealed. To the entire school. Essentially, it’s kill or be killed and Kay’s a born predator.

Now, you may say that the above description may sound like standard mystery fare. But oh, how wrong you would be. People Like Us is so much more than a mystery. It’s more than just another Mean Girls redux. It’s a savage dissection of high school in the 21st century. Of what it’s like to be a teenager when your entire life can be dismantled by the click of a mouse or the tap of a finger. People Like Us is just…. GENIUS. Dialogue is razor sharp, characters exquisitely crafted, writing on point. But what makes People Like Us so much better than the average bear are the universal truths it exposes:

Hands are the biggest obstacle. There’s nothing for them to do. It was the hardest part of picking up soccer. My reflex was to grab at the ball, protect my face, flail. Hands are too much a part of us. They give us away.

People Like Us reaches into the recesses of your brain, picks out your innermost thoughts, and records them for posterity. The musings that are so accurate to life, but never verbalized. Because of this, the elite prep school setting and Gucci-clad characters, become relatable. A feat that many books with similarly exclusive surroundings fail to do.

There are self-preserving lies and there are anesthetic lies.

Characters are further made accessible by their complexity. Stereotypical villains are rendered sympathetic. “Nice” characters aren’t always so nice. Sexuality is fluid. In other words, People Like Us features HUMANS. People with foibles, quirks, and intricacies. Teenagers in all their bright, shiny hormone-laden glory. And those characters elevate People Like Us from Pretty Little Liars knock-off to perhaps one of the best books written about teenagers this decade.

Summary: If you haven’t already surmised: READ. THIS. BOOK. But give yourself a good window of time because you won’t want to put it down. Actually you won’t be able to. It’s that compelling.