Truly Devious by Maureen Johnson

Truly Devious by Maureen Johnson

Truly Devious is the first in a four part series, it's a bestseller on Amazon for Young Adult Detective Stories, as well as being nominated as YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adult's in 2019 and a whole slew of Reader's Choice Awards . It's a thriller but not very scary, but it starts out with a child death, and then we deal with kidnapping and murder.

Stevie Bell is the polar opposite of her parents in every way, so when she gets a shot to go to school at the prestigious boarding school of Ellingham Academy, she jumps at the opportunity. A chance to be herself, to get away from her parents, to make friends with kids like her, and to solve a mystery! You see, when the school first opened, the wife and daughter of the founder, Albert Ellingham, were kidnapped and never heard from again. The kidnapper send Albert a note before the kidnappings, taunting him, and signed it "Truly Devious." Even now, the kidnapping and assumed murders of Ellingham's wife and daughter, as well as the murder of a girl at the school who saw too much, has never been solved. When Stevie starts at the school and begins looking through old information, another kid at the school is found dead. Could it be that Truly Devious is back?

Talk about fun, this book was such a pleasure. Stevie seems like such a great kid, although she is going through her angsty teen years (it happens to the best of us). We get to watch as she makes real connections with other kids who don't think she's weird for being passionate about something, and as she navigates the confusion of having a crush on someone you do NOT want to have a crush on. Unlike a lot of other young adult books, the adults in the novel do not feel annoying or like they're trying to impede the kids, but they are trying to keep the students safe, which I appreciated. Stevie gets herself into a few situations but is at least smart enough to know that it was a mistake, which I also appreciated. It was a nice mystery, which continues into the following books, but it did not seem slow and it kept me interested the whole time.

I'm giving Truly Devious by Maureen Johnson 4.25 stars out of 5, I can't wait to see what Stevie does in the second novel, The Vanishing Stair. It had a great quote that I loved, by George, the head of security. “You have to take things as they are, not how you hear they’re supposed to be.”

For more from Maureen Johnson, check out her website at https://maureenjohnsonbooks.com/

Pairs well with maple syrup barbeque beef and doing what you love, even when others think you're weird. And making a Rube Goldberg machine.