Karen M. McManus is a best-selling author of young adult mysteries. I started reading McManus’s books shortly after I graduated college, and the first one reignited my love of young adult novels and made me realize how much I adore a good mystery. So far, she has written one series, One of Us is Lying, consisting of three books. The first book, with the same title, created a simple but intriguing premise by combining The Breakfast Club and murder mystery. The series is set in Bayview, California, and every book includes the Bayview Four, the viewpoint protagonists of the first book. McManus has four more standalone novels, plus a fifth on the way. Despite the separate major characters in her books, every book she has published has been connected through a shared world. The names of characters from her standalone titles and her series and the crimes within the stories are brought up across her books. 

In her book Nothing More to Tell, a delightfully plucky aspiring reporter, Brynn, specifically references other protagonists from McManus’s work. One of the lead characters, Ellery, of Two Can Keep a Secret, appears in a video, and the Bayview Four, the leads of One Us Is Lying, are mentioned. This explicitly shows that all of the events in these other series happened in this world. Other books of hers reference these connections, and I enjoy searching for them, trying to find the threads between them. I have learned that most of the threads are in the themes and in the style. 

Unlike books featuring Hercule Poirot or Sherlock Holmes, the lead detective changes between teenage identities, and sometimes, the teens get it wrong. Though a few of the viewpoint protagonists repeat in the One of Us is Lying series, no story is told from the same perspective, and she uses multiple narrators in every book. She always includes at least one notable romance, sometimes more than one, and we see how a mystery, and eventually a murder, unravel the lives of teenage characters. Even her book covers hint at the connections between her stories. Every cover of hers shows a picture of teens with their faces either blocked or, in the case of the One of Us Is Lying series, cut out. 

By including character references and mentioning the investigations present in their stories, which do feel relevant to the characters’ situations, a shared universe is created. Because of McManus’s focus on teens and mysteries, the inclusion of similar case files does not feel forced. It acknowledges her past books, which delights fans such as myself. 

A shared universe can mean shared rules. Within fantastical series, such as the Grisha Trilogy and Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo, this indicates that the stories operate under the same laws of magic. McManus’s books keep the rules of our reality but transfer the situations into one singular world. In many ways, this world is indistinguishable from our own, but the presence of these murders surrounding teenagers drives them into one larger fictional space. 

This tells the readers that even if McManus doesn’t always follow the same characters, she has more stories of this exact type to tell. Setting related stories in a larger fictional world prevents her readers from asking questions typical of long-standing detective series like Murder, She Wrote, “Why does everyone in this one town keep dying?” “What is going on with these crime statistics?” “Are these people are cursed to live through one murder after another?” Still, I feel the connections between her stories. I love the romances, the mysteries, and the perspectives. This shared universe adds cohesion. It tells readers who loved one book of hers that more of the same style exists while letting McManus explore new stories and new viewpoint characters. 

As I am enticed and excited by this shared world, whenever a book of hers is released onto the shelves, I search for it. I’m disappointed that I was in another state when she came to sign books in Boston, but I hope to catch her next time. McManus is consistently writing books at a quick pace, and her latest, Such Charming Liars, is slated to appear on shelves in July 2024. Will it take place in the same universe? We’ll have to find out.