Truly Devious by Maureen Johnson

Young Adult. Mystery. Crime. Murder. Dark Academia. 

Rating: 4/5

Pages: 448

Started: 26 June 2024

Finished: 29 June 2024

Summary:

    Though her excessively normal, politics-inclined parents find it endlessly strange, Stevie is obsessed with murder--more specifically, with solving murders. When she is accepted to the prestigious Ellingham Academy, a remote boarding high school for exceptionally passionate students, she knows she has to go. Not because it's a great school (which it is) or because she is more than ready for a change of social scene (which she is), but because the school is the site of a set of infamous kidnappings and murders, which Stevie is determined to solve. When another suspicious murder occurs only days after the school year starts, Stevie's passion for murder mystery is kicked into high gear, and she becomes determined to figure out who killed filmmaker and conniving asshole Hayes before the school is shut down and she is forced to return home. 

Thoughts:

    Maureen Johnson's narrative voice never fails to impress me. Without diagnoses or reliance on stereotypes, she creates an awkward, intelligent, autistic-coded character that I feel I would recognize if I met on the street. Stevie's courage and interests and humor are delivered beautifully in Johnson's narration, which makes it a pleasure to read. This book's setting and mystery were also excellent. The remote boarding school in Vermont (based on Bennington College, maybe?) was very intriguing, and the alternating chapters with Stevie's story and the story of the Ellington murderers decades prior made the mystery itself fun. The one thing I did not like about this book was the cliffhanger ending. It felt gimmicky, like a James Patterson children's book instead of a clever YA novel--the surprise identity reveal by a politician in a helicopter--it felt very strange. I'll still continue with this series; I love the narration and am very curious about what's going to happen, but I wish the end had been done differently.