Review--Truly, Devious by Maureen Johnson

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. 

The two interwoven mysteries of this first book in the Truly Devious series dovetail brilliantly, and Stevie Bell will continue her relentless quest for the murderers in books two and three.

New York Times bestselling author Maureen Johnson weaves a delicate tale of murder and mystery in the first book of a striking new series, perfect for fans of Agatha Christie and E. Lockhart.

I finally picked up Maureen Johnson's Truly, Devious and was pleasantly surprised by this one! I'll admit, it does start off rather slow, we're talking almost half the book before the current events take a turn for the worst. It's been eons since I read Johnson's work so perhaps I can't remember her style, although I remember loving her Shades of London series, ghosts, mystery, what's not to love? This one is just mystery sadly, no ghosts. But I felt like it took awhile for the current mystery to come into play and what we are left with was a rather long contemporary streak of the everyday lifestyle of one Stevie Bell.

So you all know I am not a contemporary reader, that mysteries and thrillers are as close as I tend to get, so that the mystery element took awhile to come into play, that was a bit of a downer for me. Yes, we have the great mystery that happened in the past that Stevie became mildly obsessed with, it's what she used as her subject for applying to go to Ellingham Academy, but man did it take awhile for something to happen!

In the late 1930s Albert Ellingham opened a school for the gifted to attend and do what they do best, learn. It was a school open for all as Ellingham was very rich and the school was a pet project for him. Then one day, he receives a mystery letter declaring that his wife and daughter have been kidnapped and so begins a lengthy rescue attempt that leads into an investigation. We get glimpses of the past case every so often through some recorded memories of some sort and the occasional recording script of interviews from witnesses. These parts were definitely interesting as there was quite a bit of mystery behind the kidnappings themselves.

Jumping back to modern day, Stevie Bell has been accepted into the elite school for what she does best, solving mysteries. Well, sort of. She's not a Nancy Drew by any means, but she does watch a lot of the crime docuseries and that kind of thing. Unsolved cases fascinate her and none like the Ellingham kidnappings have ever come across her path before. She knows the case is decades old and it's unlikely that she can solve it, but it's a pipe dream so to speak.

The rest of the students she shares a house with, a la Harry Potter style, all have different talents as well. They are all still very prestigious and bright of course, but I don't know if it was because the mystery took so long to actually start that I missed details in the beginning about who everyone was and whatnot that I didn't really take in much for the first half of the book. It was just very mundane and ordinary. But again, this is totally a me thing and has nothing to do with the writing itself. I just thought the mystery and thrilling elements would've been more present at the start of the book as well.

By midway, we finally get to the interesting bits and that involves a murder! It seems accidental at first but the more Stevie pokes at it, she begins to wonder if it might actually be murder instead! There are quite a few suspects as well for this person was not what you would call a "good" person with good intentions, they were kind of a jerk. And so begins another mystery for Stevie to be obsessed with.

This was an interesting read and I can only hope that the series will take off from here since this first book did kind of drag a bit. There was just so much ordinary business going on in the first half that I was ready to lose my mind! Not that I wanted someone to die, but I wanted something BIG to happen because nothing was really happening at all for that first part. 

Stevie was still an intriguing character! I positively loved her personality as she was kind of spunky, and very courageous! She didn't think anything of it to dive into a possible real murder investigation. She was more wanting to know the why behind the murder than really solving it the case, if she solved it, that was just bonus points. At least that's the vibe I got.

There was an inkling of romance going on as well between Stevie and her housemate David. David has an air of mystery around him as well as he's not much of a talker and keeps to himself. But he and Stevie just click and you can see the threads of a relationship budding between them, but then of course, events happen to muck that all up!

The ending was quite exciting too! Lots of things were happening and everything is left with a bit of uncertainty. While we get some whodunit answers, there's still plenty of questions and of course, the mystery from the past doesn't really get resolved either. So it's onto the next book for me! If you're a fan of mysteries and don't mind a slower pace, this could be the read for you! If the slow paces does worry you, I still recommend giving it a try because things really do amp up once the murder happens and the air of mystery becomes so very thick and tense that it made the last half of the book a breeze! Now I'm off to start the second installment!

Overall Rating 3/5 stars