Truly, Devious by Maureen Johnson ISBN: 9780062338075
Series: Truly Devious #1
Published by HarperCollins on January 16, 2018
Genres: Mystery, Young Adult
Pages: 448
Format: Paperback
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Ellingham Academy is a famous private school in Vermont for the brightest thinkers, inventors, and artists. It was founded by Albert Ellingham, an early twentieth century tycoon, who wanted to make a wonderful place full of riddles, twisting pathways, and gardens. “A place,” he said, “where learning is a game.”
Shortly after the school opened, his wife and daughter were kidnapped. The only real clue was a mocking riddle listing methods of murder, signed with the frightening pseudonym “Truly, Devious.” It became one of the great unsolved crimes of American history.
True-crime aficionado Stevie Bell is set to begin her first year at Ellingham Academy, and she has an ambitious plan: She will solve this cold case. That is, she will solve the case when she gets a grip on her demanding new school life and her housemates: the inventor, the novelist, the actor, the artist, and the jokester.
But something strange is happening. Truly Devious makes a surprise return, and death revisits Ellingham Academy. The past has crawled out of its grave. Someone has gotten away with murder.
This one started a little slowly, for me. There are 3 layers of mystery, across two time lines, and I just had a difficult time caring about any of the characters for the first third or so of the book.
However, when the modern-timeline MC started (awkwardly) trying to befriend other characters, and then when the third mystery kicked in, I was invested. It definitely put me in mind of Real Genius, setting-wise, with a cast of gifted, neurodivergent teenagers getting up to hijinks. This time, on the secluded wooded mountain retreat of a dead eccentric billionaire who loved games and puzzles.
But where that classic Val Kilmer film had a zany, maverick-hero plot, this book veers a little darker. I was surprised to find out it’s a series, not a stand-alone. It ended on a cliffhanger, which can be annoying sometimes, but honestly I don’t think the mysteries could’ve been wrapped up in a satisfying way in one book. There’s just too much to unwrap.
Not for the first time did I want to live in this Maureen Johnson book setting. Both as a high schooler, and as an adult (being a dorm mom there would be SO much fun, I think.)
It was solidly well-written, with no major plot holes that I could see. Suspend your disbelief a bit, and you should enjoy this as a sort of dark academia beach read. I’ll be continuing the series- I have a theory about the as-yet-unresolved mysteries, but the ending of book 1 threw another handful of questions at us, so it could honestly go either way at this point.
Reading this book contributed to these challenges:
- Labyrinth TBR
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