Book Review: Truly Devious by Maureen Johnson

by The Book Pup on November 19, 2025

Blurb for the book (on Goodreads):

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.

My Summary:

Stevie Bell is obsessed with true crime, and she's scored her dream opportunity: attending Ellingham Academy, the site of one of history's most famous unsolved mysteries. In the 1930s, the school's founder lost his wife and daughter to a kidnapping, with only a cryptic letter signed "Truly Devious" left behind.

Stevie is determined to solve the decades-old cold case while navigating her new school life. But when a death occurs on campus that echoes the original crime, past and present mysteries collide.

My Review

I went into Truly Devious with high expectations, but unfortunately, this one really didn't work for me.

The premise is genuinely intriguing. A cold case mystery at a prestigious boarding school with a present-day murder that mirrors the past? That should have been captivating. And there were occasional moments of genuine intrigue that pulled me in. But those moments were few and far between, buried under long stretches where absolutely nothing happened.

The pacing was incredibly inconsistent. Sometimes things would move quickly and I'd think "okay, now we're getting somewhere!" only for the story to immediately slow to a crawl again. Most of the time, I found myself bored out of my mind waiting for something, anything, to actually happen.

Stevie is a decent protagonist who loves true crime and has some interesting investigative instincts, but her character couldn't carry the slow plot. The boarding school setting had potential, and the dual timeline structure (past mystery and present events) should have created compelling parallels, but the execution fell flat for me.

My biggest frustration? By the end of the book, we get virtually nowhere with the mystery. Not even a third of it gets solved. I understand this is book one of a trilogy, but there needs to be some sense of progress or satisfaction to make readers want to continue. Instead, it felt like I'd just read a very long prologue with no payoff.

The historical Ellingham case was more interesting than the present-day storyline, but even that didn't get enough development to feel truly engaging. The author clearly set up threads for future books, but without resolving even minor mysteries or giving readers a reason to stay invested, it just felt frustrating.

I know this series has devoted fans, and maybe the pacing improves in later books, but for me, this first installment was too slow with too little payoff to justify continuing the series.

2/5 pawprints 🐾🐾

You can find the book on Goodreads here!

Cheers, and happy reading!

The Book Pup

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