Truly Devious
A Mystery
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Truly Devious
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Narrated by:
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Kate Rudd
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Written by:
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Maureen Johnson
About this listen
New York Times best-selling 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.
Ellingham Academy is a famous private school in Vermont for the brightest thinkers, inventors, and artists. It was founded by Albert Ellingham, an early 20th 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.
Publishers Weekly Best Books of 2018
Junior Library Guild Selection
2019 YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults Nomination
2019 ALA's Best Fiction for Young Adults Nomination
Chicago Public Library Best of the Best Books 2018
Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Young Adult Fiction 2018
2018 Nerdy Book Club Young Adult Winner
Seventeen Best YA Book of 2018
Lincoln Award Nominee
2020-2021 South Carolina Book Awards Nominee
©2018 HarperCollins Publishers (P)2018 HarperCollins PublishersWhat listeners say about Truly Devious
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance1 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- Laura
- 2019-08-20
Truly terrible narration
I enjoyed the book in a general sense but feel that I would have preferred reading it instead of listening to it. I found the narration to be awful. So bad that I almost gave up. The male voices are beyond ridiculous. I was listening to it in the car with my husband and 14 year old daughter on a long road trip and non of us could let a single sentence of male dialogue go by without a solid guffaw and attempt (to great amusement) to imitate it.
The story appears to be clever and well told (at least initially) however I felt very let down by the ending. I agree with previous reviews that it's appropriate to carry elements of a mystery through a series but that there needs to be some resolution within individual books. It feels jarring and a bit of a cheap trick. So much so that I am not inclined to read the next ones.
There were some ridiculous and improbable elements that bothered me. How Stevie manages to ignore the message left on her wall by 'Devious', chalking it up to lack of sleep, heightened anxiety or what have you. As well as how she, for far too long, seems not even to consider the idea that the death of her fellow student was a murder and not an accident. (especially when paired with the message on her wall). These elements seemed out of keeping for the intelligent and intuitive teenager that is painted as a bit of a genius of crime.
All in all, the writing is better than average for the genre with creative detail, but the plot and pacing need some work. And please, oh please, a different narrator!!
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Amazon Customer
- 2023-08-17
Holy cliffhangers Batman!
So good! Kept me guessing the whole time!
I liked that there was a mystery happening right now, but also an unsolved mystery from 1936 that she is trying to solve!
Highly recommend!
Jumping into the next one right now!
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance2 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- Genevieve Paquette
- 2021-04-09
ok
Picked this up on Audible, listened a second time today. As an adult reading this, it doesn't really hold up to a second read. The concept is great, the mystery is compelling, but...
I would like this trilogy a lot better if it weren’t for the extremely problematic romance subplot between Stevie, the protagonist, and David, the undercover rich bad boy with a terrible attitude and a massive chip on his shoulder. No, seriously, I would hesitate to recommend this to an actual youth/teenager because of how unhealthy the relationship was. It’s just getting started in this installment, and it gets much worse, but it’s bad enough. A relationship based on lies, obfuscations and suspicion, built on a foundation of shared trauma. They don’t even /like/ each other. It was unnecessary and it added nothing of value to the plot.
It ruins what would otherwise be a pretty good YA/teen mystery.
The other thing is, the characters are largely one-dimensional. It's like they've each been allowed to have two or maybe three traits, and that's it. Stevie likes true crime, doesn't care about her appearance and has an anxiety disorder. Janelle is queer, cheerful and good at building things. Nate is a curmudgeon with touch-aversion and crippling writers block. It's not the wooorst, but it's not great, and it makes it hard to really get invested.
I will say, though, the 1930s plot is pretty great, and it's the reason why I finished the trilogy.
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Overall2 out of 5 stars
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Performance2 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- Cherilyn Bradley
- 2023-10-20
Truly Disappointing
I just wasn’t compelled by the characters or convinced of the mysteries. I ended up googling the the series synopses and quitting 80% through.
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