Truly Devious by Maureen Johnson
Title: Truly Devious
Author: Maureen Johnson
Published: 2018
Type: Fiction
Pages: 416
Look! A riddle! Time for fun!
Should we use a rope or gun?
Knives are sharp and gleam so pretty
Poison’s slow, which is a pity
Fire is festive, drowning’s slow
Hanging’s a ropy way to go
A broken head, a nasty fall
A car colliding with a wall
Bombs make a very jolly noise
Such ways to punish naughty boys!
What shall we use? We can’t decide.
Just like you cannot run or hide.
Ha ha.
Truly,
Devious
In Brief:
I stayed up late to finish this one – it was the first book in a long time I just couldn’t put down. A delicious mystery with delightful characters, just a joy to read. The perfect light mystery, with enough intrigue to maintain tension/engagement, without going too over-the-top dramatic. Maureen Johnson was one of my favorite YA authors in high school, I was delighted that this book held up!
Rating: 4.6
Plot Summary:
Truly Devious is set in Ellingham Academy, a remote Vermont boarding school founded in the 1930s by eccentric tycoon Albert Ellingham. Shortly after the school’s opening, there was a terrible crime – Ellingham’s wife and daughter were kidnapped. The culprit was never definitively found, and though the wife’s body eventually appeared, the daughter remains missing to this day. The only clue: a ransom note made of magazine clippings, signed “Truly, Devious.”
Now, the school is attended by teenage geniuses – inventors, novelists, actors, reporters, etcetera. Our protagonist, Stevie, is a new student starting her first year at Ellingham Academy. She’s an expert on true-crime, intent on solving the Ellingham mystery while also navigating her new, strange school and classmates. However, Stevie barely has time to get started on the cold case before she’s confronted with an unexpected twist: a real-time murder to be solved!
Where I’m At:
So on a surface level, I didn’t identify with Stevie all that much. I’m not a teenager anymore, I’ve never had much of an interest in true-crime, much less any desire to see a dead body. However, one thing that I really appreciated about the book on a personal level was the way Johnson wrote about Stevie’s mental health. Stevie has anxiety – it’s part of her, something she has to grapple with, but not something that’s “wrong,” not some kind of flaw.
It made me wish I could have read this book, or a book like it, when I was in high school. Now that I have a therapist, it’s easy to look back and recognize how much I struggled with anxiety as a teen (and into early adulthood). At the time though, I just thought there was something wrong with me, or attributed it to just being too awkward or nerdy or shy. I didn’t have the words to explain my panic or twisting stomach in what should have been normal situations, didn’t have any tools (that I now use) to cope with the symptoms. I haven’t really read another fiction book that accurately describes how it feels to have anxiety, and Johnson even slips in some pretty good advice – I appreciated that.
That was something they taught you in anxiety therapy – the thoughts may come, but you don't have to chase them all. It was sort of the opposite of good detective work, in which you had to follow every lead.
Anxiety is just stupid. It’s unable to tell the difference between things that are actually scary (being buried alive, for example) and things that are not scary at all (being in bed under the covers). It hits all the same buttons. Stop. Go. Up. Down. It’s all the same to anxiety.
Getting Into it:
As I write this, I realize I don’t actually have a ton to say about this book. I just liked it so much, and want to share it with everyone. I feel like I should make a list of books to recommend to people who aren’t that into reading, that I think are easy to get into and enjoy. Off the top of my head, there’s this book, Circe, Outlawed, and The Seven Husbands of Eveyln Hugo (reviews on the last two will be written soon).
Anyway. I won’t say that the writing in this book was the most beautiful or tear-jerking. But that’s not really the point of this kind of book – I see it as being about giving the reader charming and believable characters, a fun world to escape to, and an engaging storyline. Truly Devious nails all these things. It’s fast-paced, jumping back and forth from Stevie’s investigation in the present day to details of the crime in the 1930s. This works, because it means the reader can catch up on the crime without Stevie giving boring exposition in conversation or something like that. It’s also full of rich details, little clues that might come up later, meaning that the reader can try and solve the crime right along with Stevie. It reminded me of Agatha Christie in that there are real stakes, but it never becomes too gory/scary/difficult to read (though to be fair I haven’t read Christie since high school, so maybe I’m totally off).
The characters aren’t that deep, but who is at fourteen? There’s also some structural difficulty of really getting into Stevie’s head even though she’s the narrator, given that she’s somewhat awkward and closed-off as a person. Yet, she and her friends are still believable, and very endearing with their distinct passion projects. It’s less of “Oh yes I am totally in this character’s head and understand all the nuances about her,” more of “Aww what a sweet kid, I care about what happens to her.” The students are geniuses, but not in an Artemis Fowl way – they still have normal teenage thoughts and angst. At one point, Stevie observes:
There were a few people with glossy, perfect hair who had already clumped together through that strange alchemy that joins all people with perfect, glossy hair.
Which felt like an exact thought I might have had as a teenager. Lastly, the friendships that Stevie forms with her classmates Janelle and Nate are sweet and quirky and felt realistic to the way that nerdy teenagers interact. Stevie and Nate in particular have a lot of fun, affectionate dialogue:
“Vitamin D,” Stevie said. “You need it.”
“You don’t know that,” [Nate] said. “I want to eat my meat in my room with the lights off.”
“As a writer, are those really the words you want to use?” Stevie asked.
The only thing I didn’t like about the book was the romance aspect. Stevie develops feelings for a classmate who’s a typical aloof, hot, bad-boy type. I just found it puzzling and uninteresting, didn’t see any chemistry there. I would have preferred if her friendship with Nate evolved into something romantic, or if there was nothing at all! The book just didn’t need it.
“The fact is," he said, "I liked you from the first moment I saw you, when you looked like you wanted to punch me in the face for just being alive. That probably says something dark about me. And I think you like me because I annoy you. Both of us have real problems, but maybe we should make our weird personalities work for us.”
I’m not convinced. Thankfully, it was a very minor part of the book.
Romance aside, though – I really loved this book. Many thanks to my friend Madeleine, who recommended it! I’ve enjoyed exploring some YA again recently, and was glad that one of my old favorite authors still holds up. Again, I wouldn’t recommend it if you’re looking for a “deep” or life-changing read, but I still very strongly recommend it for a lot of fun.
