5th book in the Truly Devious series
Senior year at Ellingham Academy for Stevie Bell isn’t going well. Her boyfriend, David, is studying in London. Her friends are obsessed with college applications. With the cold case of the century solved, Stevie is adrift. There is nothing to distract her from the questions pinging around her brain—questions about college, love, and life in general.
Relief comes when David invites Stevie and her friends to join him for study abroad, and his new friend Izzy introduces her to a double-murder cold case. In 1995, nine friends from Cambridge University went to a country house and played a drunken game of hide-and-seek. Two were found in the woodshed the next day, murdered with an ax.
The case was assumed to be a burglary gone wrong, but one of the remaining seven saw something she can’t explain. This was no break-in. Someone’s lying about what happened in the woodshed.
Seven suspects. Two murders. One killer still playing a deadly game.
CW: Death, murder, violence, panic attack, infidelity, alcohol and drug use
Rating
Review
This is the last instalment in the Truly Devious series, and I’m not fond of it.
You start the book with an explanation of what happened before the murder, and even if you have an info-dumpy portrait of who is who, I found it very difficult to make a difference between the nine characters who assist in the murder.
I preferred to read about the mystery, but it feels like it takes more and more time to be in the investigation, which frustrates me a lot. When you reach this part, it’s worth it, and you just need to be transported by the author in the unravelling of this book.
I understand the author needs to explain how London is constructed, but I found it too much. I need a clear idea of where they are and how everything looks, but sometimes, I find it too detailed and over the top. However, it was rather comical to read about an American walking in the London streets for the first time in her life.
I’m bored by Stevie. I hate the romance part of the book. It takes too much space for me and how she acts. I know she is young, but I give her 13 years old; she is so immature and selfish in her decision.Also, she is just dumb, really dumb. As if she doesn’t know anything about the world that surrounds her and her only purpose in her life is to solve crimes. I struggled while reading the previous book, and I still struggle with this one.
The ending was a little meh and disappointing. The big plot twist was not a real one, as the revelation of the killer makes sense without making one. The explanations weren’t satisfying as they just showed that the crime wasn’t a real one. People were killed but a little without genuine reasons, and even if the author explained why they were dead, you’re not really convinced by it.
Overall, it’s a meh book, not bad, not outstanding, just here to be read when you don’t know what to do. I know it will be the last book I will read from this series as I can’t with these characters, and sadly, I don’t read YA anymore, or I tend to avoid the younger YA.
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