"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.
Bates should definitely NOT feature any of these young women in their pamphlets, because they are all pretty twisted. I enjoyed seeing the revenge plot unfold, and thought Mele guided us on a nice, twisty journey to finding the killer and the truth behind why these events unfolded. We met lots of damaged and really flawed characters. I do wish I got to know some of them better, and that they had been utilized more in the book. However, I thought the author did a great job tangling multiple mysteries, and I was throughly entertained.