Truly Devious – Truly Great Mystery!

Truly Devious by Maureen Johnson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Right off the bat I knew I would love this book and that I would connect with Stevie:

“‘The moose is a lie,; Stevie Bell said. ‘What?’ ‘See that?’ Stevie indicated a sign that simply read MOOSE. ‘We’ve passed five of those. That’s a lot of promises. Not one moose.'”

This was totally me when I went on a trip to New England! My exact thoughts! And of course, from there on out I 100% connected with Stevie. I absolutely loved her character, and I wish that I had had this book in high school! Her friend Janelle was really enjoyable as well, not only as a black woman, but a black woman in a STEM field! I love both of these characters so much and I can’t wait to see what happens to them in the next book.

I loved the dual timelines, especially because the past doesn’t take over the present mystery and vice versa. They really compliment each other and give you just enough information to make you think you know who Truly Devious is, but not enough to make you confident you have it right. There is no way of knowing if the two crimes are related or not, or if its even the same person. I couldn’t put it down and found myself thinking about the mystery even when I wasn’t reading the book trying to figure out who did it!

I didn’t realize until I had about 50 pages to go that there was no way this would be solved in this book. I immediately checked to see if it was a standalone or the first in a series, and lo and behold, its a series! So as you can probably imagine, this book ends in a cliffhanger. And man, what a cliffhanger it was! I actually yelled WHAT?!?!? when I got to the end.

The next book is definitely going to be one of my must reads for 2019 when it comes out! If you like mysteries of any kind, I definitely recommend this book!