You'll Be the Death of Me

Product Description
From the author of One of Us Is Lying comes a brand-new pulse-pounding thriller. It's Ferris Bueller's Day Off with murder when three old friends relive an epic ditch day, and it goes horribly—and fatally—wrong.
Ivy, Mateo, and Cal used to be close. Now all they have in common is Carlton High and the beginning of a very bad day. Type A Ivy lost a student council election to the class clown, and now she has to face the school, humiliated. Heartthrob Mateo is burned out from working two jobs since his family’s business failed. And outsider Cal just got stood up . . . again.
So when the three unexpectedly run into each other, they decide to avoid their problems by ditching. Just the three of them, like old times. Except they’ve barely left the parking lot before they run out of things to say. . .
. . . until they spot another Carlton High student skipping school—and follow him to the scene of his own murder. In one chance move, their day turns from dull to deadly. And it’s about to get worse. It turns out Ivy, Mateo, and Cal still have some things in common...like a connection to the dead kid. And they’re all hiding something.
Could it be that their chance reconnection wasn’t by chance after all?
Fans of the hit thriller that started it all can watch the secrets of the Bayview Four be revealed in the One of Us is Lying TV series now streaming on NBC's Peacock!
Review
"With fast pacing and her signature flair for the dramatic,
McManus
weaves a masterful tale of secrets, lies, and twisted intentions that will be sure to keep readers
guessing whodunit, from start to finish." —
Booklist (Starred review)
"A master of the teen thriller delivers again" —
Kirkus Reviews"...a believable,
pulse-pounding thriller." —
Publishers Weekly
About the Author
Karen M. McManus earned her BA in English from the College of the Holy Cross and her MA in journalism from Northeastern University. She is the #1
New York Times bestselling author of
One of Us Is Lying,
Two Can Keep a Secret,
One of Us Is Next,
The Cousins, and
You'll Be the Death of Me. Her work has been published in more than 40 languages. To learn more about Karen and her books, visit karenmcmanus.com, or follow @writerkmc on Twitter and Instagram.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
1
Ivy
I respect a good checklist, but I’m beginning to think my mother went overboard.
“Sorry, what page?” I ask, flipping through the handout at our kitchen table while Mom watches me expectantly via Skype. The heading reads Sterling-Shepard 20th-Anniversary Trip: Instructions for Ivy and Daniel, and it’s eleven pages total. Double-sided. My mother planned the first time she and Dad ever left me and my brother alone--for four days--with the same thoroughness and military precision she brings to everything. Between the checklist and the frequent calls over Skype and FaceTime, it’s like they never left.
“Nine,” Mom says. Her blond hair is pulled back in her signature French twist and her makeup is perfect, even though it’s barely five a.m. in San Francisco. My parents’ flight home doesn’t take off for another three and a half hours, but Mom is never anything but prepared. “Right after the lighting section.”
“Ah, the lighting section.” My brother, Daniel, sighs dramatically from across the table as he overfills a bowl with Lucky Charms. Daniel, despite being sixteen, has the cereal tastes of a toddler. “I would have thought we could turn them on when we need them, and off when we don’t. I was wrong. So very, very wrong.”
“A well-lit house deters break-ins,” Mom says, like we don’t live on a street where the closest thing we’ve ever witnessed to a criminal act is kids riding bicycles without a helmet.
I keep my eyeroll to myself, though, because it’s impossible to win an argument against my mother. She teaches applied statistics at MIT, and has up-to-the-minute data for everything. It’s why I’m thumbing through her ch