Truly, Devious
Truly Devious • Book 1
by Maureen Johnson
Why You'll Love This
A girl enrolls at a school built around riddles — and the unsolved kidnapping that haunted its founder is still waiting to be cracked.
- Great if you want: a YA mystery with a real cold-case obsessive at its center
- The experience: dual timelines that keep you toggling between past dread and present unease
- The writing: Johnson builds atmosphere fast — the school itself feels like a character with secrets
- Skip if: you need a satisfying conclusion — this ends on a cliffhanger
About This Book
Ellingham Academy sits tucked into the Vermont mountains like a secret waiting to be cracked open — a school built on riddles, founded by an eccentric tycoon whose family was stolen from him shortly after its doors opened. Decades later, the kidnapping and its taunting ransom note, signed "Truly, Devious," remain unsolved. When Stevie Bell arrives as a new student, she's brought her true-crime obsession with her and a private mission: finish what investigators never could. But Ellingham has a way of making everything more complicated, and the past and present have an unsettling habit of rhyming.
Maureen Johnson balances two timelines with real confidence, braiding the glamorous dread of the 1930s cold case against Stevie's messy, anxious present in a way that keeps both threads equally alive. The prose is sharp and funny without undercutting the tension, and Stevie herself is the rare fictional detective whose intelligence feels genuinely earned rather than announced. Johnson understands that the best mysteries are also character studies, and reading this one feels less like following clues than falling down a very elegant rabbit hole.