As always, a great murder mystery. I enjoyed continuing to get to know the other characters more as they are in their senior year. I am a bit mad about that cliffhanger ending though!

1995: Meet ‘The Nine’: 9 friends that form a theatre group in Cambridge. This is the last week they will be living together, as they finish college and have to part ways. They decide to spend their last day in a huge mansion owned by one of their families, and play a game of hide and seek, even though it is late and it’s raining outside. By the next morning, two of them will be dead.

Present day: Stevie’s boyfriend, David, is studying and working in the UK. After being apart for months, he invites Stevie and the rest of the gang to spend a few days with him in London. As soon as they get there, David’s friend, Izzie, asks for Stevie’s help: her aunt was one of the Nines and she thinks there’s more to her friend’s deaths. When said aunt disappears the next day, things take a dark turn. Can Stevie help unravel the mystery before it’s too late?

I must confess that all the previous four books (except for the third, which was quite good) were only ok for me. I kept coming back to the series because they’re entertaining enough and it’s always cool to read how people solve mysteries, but none of the books were really that exciting for me.
This absolutely changed with this book! I loved it. I loved reading about the nine and I loved reading about the present-day gang. True friendship is really the best thing in the world ❤️
Also, the mystery about the murders was really cool, too.
4,5 stars and OF COURSE I will be continuing with this series!

I am so deeply invested in these characters, that I will follow them anywhere! Lucky for me, this installation in the series took us to London where Stevie has managed to convince her friends to take a “learning trip” with her. The fact that her boyfriend David is going to school there is just an added bonus, no biggie! 😜

Initially, I felt a bit frustrated with Stevie’s emotional intensity about being with David, but I think that’s because my wanderlust had me feeling more like Janelle and Vi. I loved all the descriptions of the English countryside and the beauty of London!

Confession: my favorite character is Nate! I just want to learn more and more about him!

I love how Maureen Johnson has stories within stories in her novels. I love the historical fiction vibes the plots give. My only complaint is I wanted more of this and less of the teenage drama. Her others in the series dove so deeply into the mysteries that I couldn’t put the books down. This one, not so much!

Nonetheless, I loved the mystery and Maureen Johnson always ends her novels in a way that makes it certain I’ll be reading the next!

In the meantime, I think I’ll reread The Box in the Woods! ☺️

Last thing: I loved the way music played a role in this book! I could heavily relate to it!

Verdict: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Stevie Bell is back! Stevie, Vi, Jinnell, and Nate are back at Ellingham Academy finishing up their senior year and thinking about college when David, Stevie’s boyfriend, presents them with an idea to go to London, England for study abroad as part of their curriculum. Before you know it, Stevie is wrapped up in a proper English mystery!

I thoroughly enjoyed this book in the series! I love the dual timeline entries that help set up the murder mystery, and helps the reader understand the additional characters’ involvement. I like the way the main character solves mysteries; the way she puzzles everything together is really fun! The pacing of the story kept me reading; I couldn’t put it down, and I love seeing how the characters have evolved since the very first book. Be warned, there’s a cliffhanger! I can’t wait for the next book!

This book and the entire series is perfect for secondary students who may be reluctant readers.

Many thanks to HarperCollins and NetGalley for an advanced readers e-copy in exchange for a review. All opinions are my own.

I love Maureen Johnson’s books. This absolutely amazing and I can’t wait to read more from this author! I loved it from start to finish.

Stevie Bell continues to be an absolute delight while David continues to be a dingbat in this fifth entry by Maureen Johnson. David has been dishonorably shipped to the UK by his dad, and Stevie and her peers manage to create their own educational field trip to visit. Of course, cold cases find Stevie wherever she is, and she quickly gets stirred up in a decades-old dual murder that took place in the English countryside. I was thrilled to see a destination abroad for Stevie and co., especially since Johnson’s Shades of London series is one of my favorites!

Pros: Stevie, Nate, and Janelle are the friends I need in my life. The atmospherics of the UK were well-written, and I was incredibly drawn to the Nine and their friendship dynamics. The dual timelines and many perspectives were crafted strongly and uniquely.

Pits: I fail to see any redemptive characteristics of David. The ending/resolution of the mystery snuck up on me, and I wish there had been a little more clarity.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advance review copy!

I physically could not put this book down! I was hooked from the beginning and could not read it fast enough! The storyline is incredibly thought out, the characters are all just the right amount of suspicious, and the way everything unfolds just the right way is incredible! If you have even a passing interest in murder mysteries then you need to read this book!

Prepare yourself for all that happens in this story! In the latest installment of the series finds Stevie solving another murder, this time aboard. I always enjoy the mystery aspect of the story and the way Stevie's mind works to solve things. That is what keeps me reading. However I felt like this story had a lot of fluff that did not add anything to solving the overall mystery. There were a lot of characters to keep track of and I found myself having to go back to previous chapters to keep things straight. I thought that the studying abroad and relationship issues that get brought up during the story are distracting and at times very boring. The mystery is what kept me reading. After 5 books I think it is starting to become annoying with Stevie and David going back and forth on whether they are together or not. All that being said I still enjoyed the story and the mystery and will eagerly await the next installment.

There’s nothing quite like an English country house for setting the stage for murder and mystery. So for the latest Stevie Bell mystery, Nine Liars, author Maureen Johnson leaves Ellingham Academy behind, taking her beloved young characters to England for a classic whodunit at a stately old manor.

Full review published on NightsAndWeekends.com and aired on Shelf Discovery.

I've really enjoyed this series and I appreciate that it's branched out if the setting of the first 3 books. That said, I found the characters all hard to deal with in this book. I liked the story and how it wove into what happened in the past and I didn't guess who did it, which I always love. ⭐️⭐️⭐️💫.

After devouring the rest of this series earlier this year I loved having another chance to read another addition to Stevie Bell and her crew!

The English setting was so much fun and I had a great time reading this book

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providing an advance readers copy in exchange for an honest review!

Stevie and her friends are back at school for their 2nd and final year at Ellingham Academy. While the rest of her group are preparing for college applications, Stevie is stuck. No mysteries to solve at school. No boyfriend to distract her. Lucky for her, Ellingham is a special academy. So, when David offers everyone a chance to "study abroad" for a week in London, it's a no brainer. While the Ellingham group has plenty of tours and excursions lined up, David's new friend Izzy has a different plan for Stevie. Solving a murder, naturally. Back in the 9os, Izzy's aunt was away with 8 friends for one last hurrah before college. When after a game of hide and seek two of those nine are found brutally murdered on the grounds. While the murder was chalked up to a burglary gone wrong, Izzy's aunt may have a nagging suspicion it was one of the nine liars.

The Good: The actual case. I think it was totally compelling and I could've read way more about these friends and their days at Cambridge and the events leading up to the murder. I think the solution was clever and I enjoyed the roundtable lay out of the facts at the end to trap the murderer.

The Bad: Everything else.

Wow, was Stevie always this annoying? I'm all about continuing this series, but not at the expense of totally destroying the characters and their growth. Stevie cannot still be this insecure about David. And since when is David this insecure? Why even bring Nate, Vi, and Janelle along if they aren't going to provide anything to the mystery? And don't even get me started about the "sex hoodie". Look, I understand that we're in YA territory here. That means angst and immaturity. But nothing any of the main characters did in this installment made sense and that's what is the most frustrating of all.

Maybe it's time Johnson focuses on other mysteries, something she totally exceeds in writing, and just let these characters go now that she's backed herself into a corner with their insufferable or nonexistent personalities.

I"m greatly enjoying Stevie being transplanted into classic murder scenarios (boarding school, slasher film, agatha christie style English mystery). Hope this series continues, I can't wait to see what happens next for Stevie and the gang.

Maureen Johnson has done it again, and by it, I mean writing a book that I literally could not put down and had to read in one sitting.

Stevie is back to her crime solving ways in Nine Liars but this time she's in England and tackling a case that's older than she is.

When dinner with Izzy (a friend of Davids's) and her aunt talking about an unsolved murder turns into a missing person case Stevie knows she needs to solve both cases, and she'll do everything she can to do just that even if it means a little trickery with Dr. Quinn and her friends.

I need more books in this series, I loved this from the first sentence to the last page, on the subject of the last page, that last line... I can't stop thinking about it, who, how, when, all the questioning words keep popping into my brain and I need answers.

With stunning imagery that takea us across the globe, characters that span generations but somehow work together, and a plot with so many twists and turns I gave up trying to figure it out and just let it reveal itself as the story went on.

Thank you to NetGalley and HarperCollins for providing an advance copy of this ebook, I have voluntarily read and reviewed it and all thoughts and opinions are my own.

When I saw Stevie Bell and the Ellingham Academy gang were back to solve another mystery, I couldn't hit the request button for the latest "Truly Devious" book fast enough. (Note: While you can pick up many series at any book, I recommend you start from the beginning for this one.)

In the series' fifth installment, teenage detective Stevie Bell is in London to see her boyfriend David - accompanied by her best friends Janelle, Nate and Vi, of course. The trip abroad is a welcome distraction from Stevie's growing concerns about her future, whether David has fallen for a chic Brit and the fact that the girl who's getting a following as the wunderkind detective doesn't have a case to solve. As it always does, the latest case finds Stevie: in the form of David's suspiciously cute and close friend Izzy, her aunt Angela and the mysterious unsolved murder that took the lives of two of The Nine: a group of Cambridge performing arts besties who were splintered into just seven in a brutal killing in the 1990s.

As usual, Maureen Johnson's whip-sharp writing and ability to create sympathetic, smart characters is on full display. We see the nuance of Stevie and her friends, continue following them in their outside-Ellingham world after the latest installment took us to a summer camp, and root for Stevie to come through in the end. Teenage drama weighed a bit heavier in this edition for my taste, making it my least favorite of the series: but a least-favorite Truly Devious book still tops many books out there. A solid four stars and one to recommend if you like the series.

This was my first time reading something by Maureen Johnson and I’m glad I got a copy of it! This book was thrilling at times. It’s definitely geared towards high school aged kids but it’s always fun to read something easy at times. I wasn’t aware this book was part of a series and it reads VERY well for being part of one. You don’t necessarily have to read the previous ones to know what’s going on in the story. This story follows Stevie Bell and her gang of friends as the venture to England for a school trip (and also to see Stevie’s boyfriend, David). When the story starts we just think it’s a trip abroad for the murder mystery gang, but of course it can’t be! David introduces his new friend Izzy and she gives Stevie all she needs to be on the case again. It like a little Nancy drew/ Sherlock Holmes/ Scooby-doo and the gang kind of story. I recommend it for those young mystery lovers!

I've given this series a solid try, but it must not be for me.

I like the idea of these books, but the execution always leaves me wanting. The mysteries always seem unfocused and a bit meandering for my tastes.

This one also had the challenge of too many potential suspects without adequate development of these characters. Keeping track of nine characters was hard enough, let alone trying to keep track of their movements the night of the crime. There either should have been fewer characters in the house the night of the crime or more work should have gone into developing each of the characters.

Most of the fun in reading mysteries and thrillers for me is trying to guess what happened, so if I'm too uninvested in the characters to even attempt to guess who did it, I don't consider that a good mystery.

The last bit of the book dedicated to the reveal was pretty solid, as in previous books, even if I didn't necessarily enjoy how we got to that point.

I will say that one of my biggest complaints with some of the previous books is the pacing between past and present, and I think Nine Liars was structured in a way that, in my opinion, was a slight improvement. The mystery of what happened lasts just a little bit longer and clues learned from the past don't outpace what Stevie learns in the present.

Other than this slight change, this follows a similar formula to the previous books, so if you liked the previous books, you're sure to like this one.

I'm not sure if I'll keep reading the series because, again, I do really like the ideas, but I just don't enjoy myself for most of each book.

More unsolved murders with this quirky cast? Yes please! And we are moving across the ocean to another even quirkier friend group? Again yes, please!

This murder is going back in time to the 90’s so all key people are still alive and we get to really experience them and the night of the murder which I love. We get so much more Nate, Vi, and Janelle. We get more David. Love and love. The book talks a lot about what’s next for all of them which leads us to the part of the book I did not love. Stevie confidence and self worth in this book is at an all time low. I hate this. She spent as much time solving the murder as she did being down on herself from her clothes, to talent, to her future, to doubting all her relationships.

The ending though?! A new book has to be in order and I am here for it!

*side note. Still here for team David. Probably always will be.

Don’t skip this one!

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for a chance to read this book early in an exchange for a review.

I don’t even know where to begin.

When we found out David was headed off to London in THE BOX IN THE WOODS, I just KNEW Maureen was going to give us some Stevie Bell in England action.

I was not disappointed. I absolutely loved the unraveling of this murder mystery, and I was utterly shocked when it came time for the big reveal.

Stevie is one of my favorite YA characters for a number of reasons. I love the anxiety rep. I love her dogged pursuit of finding a solution or answers to problems that are weighing on her. I love her friendships, especially with Nate. Nate should be protected at all costs. And of course, I love her and David.

This book…threw me for an absolute loop. HIGHLY recommend.

It was so fantastic to be back with Stevie Bell and her friends. I really enjoy Maureen Johnson's writing and the way she constructs a mystery. I never know who's done what or how Stevie is going to figure it out. This novel has more of a country house mystery to it than the previous novels and it is so well done. I can't wait to see what's in store next for Stevie!