5th book in the Truly Devious series, 5 friends, 5 star rating.

Maureen Johnson takes the Ellingham Academy crew to London to visit David in the midst of applying to college. Whilst there, Stevie gets caught up in a 1995 English Manor House Murder (and now my life is complete) and how to take her relationship with David to the next level.

Full of loyalty, lies, queer rep, subterfuge, and Major Life Decisions, this one is a keeper.

5 great big stars
Absolute must-purchase for school libraries

I loved the original Truly Devious trilogy and even Box in the Woods was a fun surprise. I thought the mysteries were original and the characters were (for the most part) really likable. This book takes place mostly abroad in England, and Stevie and Co. try to solve another cold case about murders that had taken place at a manor country house decades before present day. The murder mystery itself was fine, like I was kept guessing (it helped that there were so many suspects), but the group dynamics of Stevie and her friends felt weird in this book.

Also I think it’s time to recognize that Stevie and David do not have chemistry and they never had chemistry and they are so boring to read about. David is still annoying in this book just like he was in all of the other books. The ending of this book felt like a really cheap way to set up a new book. I want to read about Stevie and her friends solving crimes, not Stevie and David.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing an advanced reader’s copy!

Nine friends. Seven suspects. Two murders. And one chance to get it right. Stevie Bell, now semi-famous for solving the Truly Devious and Camp Wonder Falls mysteries, is on a study tour with her friends in London--which, not-so-coincidentally is where her boyfriend David is studying. Stevie has been missing David terribly, and with decisions about her future looming (college, studies, love, and growing up), all she wants to do is to feel safe and loved with him. But no sooner have they reunited than he introduces them to his friend Izzy (a cute classmate of David's) who invites Stevie and the group to help solve a cold case from 1995 that involves the death of two of her aunt's friends.

The cold case from 1995 forms the second of the dual timelines. Nine best friends who have formed a theatrical group together, live together, date each other, and support each other are spending one last week together at a country house after graduation from Cambridge. But during one of their traditional games of hide-and-seek, two of their number are gruesomely murdered. The authorities write it off to burglars, but suspicions remain and don't resurface until the present day when Stevie and her friends arrive on the scene.

The mystery was crafted so well, in typical Maureen Johnson fashion. Such a twisty, dark, and tragic cold case. A country manor mystery in the tradition of great closed-door mysteries. And I love how the characters in both timelines are about to uncertainly embark on the next phase of life without their ride-or-die friends. The difference for me between this book and the previous four in the series was that with the previous books I really struggled to put them down (and that's saying something, since I'm a full-time working mom and treasure my sleep above all else!). But I found this one easier to put down, mainly because of Stevie's self-destructive toxicity and the significant portions of the book that were unnecessarily dedicated to London tourist stops. Nine Liars was definitely an ode to London. Flawed characters are important, and Johnson's magic is still there, but I really don't like Stevie and David very much after this. The way the book ended another book or two must be coming to give us resolution, so maybe they will be redeemed soon. I hope so, because I really love this series!

Overall this was a good addition to the Truly Devious series. This book has Stevie and her friends back together on another adventure, to London this time, that just so happens to involve a murder. The mystery of who killed two members of the Nine is what keeps this particular story going. While the friendships between Stevie, Nick, Janelle and Vi are the backbone of the series, it was still frustrating to watch Stevie continually make bad decisions that she knew would affect her friends. Hopefully in future books, she doesn't treat them as side characters in her life. Still, the murder mystery from the past and it's eventual reveal were intriguing and keeps the reader engaged.

Much like Box in the Woods, this book was underwhelming. I finished it more out of obligation than enjoyment. While Nate is still the best character, all the other characters seem to be missing the spark they had in the original Truly Devious books. I wish Vi had a bigger part and Janelle was relegated to a side character who is only there to be the voice of reason. David is bland and Stevie is missing something that made her an entertaining and enjoyable narrator in the original 3 books. I’m not invested in Stevie anymore as a narrator. The Nine plot was…something. It didn’t make sense, it didn’t carry as a story, and there were way too many people to keep track of and understand. When the final reveal takes place, it’s anti climactic because it was hard to keep track of who was who and what their motivation could be. The two spin off Truly Devious books are missing the connection the original 3 had.

Starts off pretty slow, however I’ve grown so attached to Stevie and friends that I would enjoy reading about them knitting for a whole book and still be intrigued.

Thank you NetGalley, the publisher and the author for allowing me to read an eARC of this book.

Maureen Johnson does it again!! I love love love YA mysteries and the truly devious series is one of my favorites! I was so pleased to see there was another one in the series. I loved that this was set in London and the murder mystery in this book was so good! I love to type my theories and ideas in my notes app and I’m usually pretty close, but it took me to the last minute to pull the story all together. I will note it did take me a while to really get into this book but I blame it on school and other stuff lol. Once I got into the book I could barely put it down. I will say the end “cliff hanger” made me ready for the next one, so Maureen Johnson please let there be another one!

Stevie Bell is back, and this time she's in England on a week-long exchange trip. She's doing tourist-y things with her friends, but also gets mixed up in boyfriend David's friend's family drama: an unsolved murder from the '90s (and that this is presented as being SO LONG AGO makes me realize I am an aged crone) involving a big friend group and decades of secrecy. Stevie juggles the case against being a good friend and girlfriend, while avoiding her bigger responsibilities like college selection.
The writing felt a little rough in the beginning, but either it smoothed out or I got over myself after a few chapters. The book stands alone perfectly well, but readers already familiar with the characters of the Truly Devious universe will get more out of the story.

This is the fifth book in the Stevie Bell series, and the one with the best mystery so far. The series blends teen drama with murder mysteries.
For me, the teen drama only gets more annoying the farther into the series I read. However, the murder mysteries? Those just keep getting better.

This book gives you the perfect amount of information on the murders to set you theorizing, without giving too much and giving it away. You get both flashbacks to the crime and police reports, which often disagree with each other. The trick is to combine it with clues from the present to figure out who is lying, and why.

I would also like to take this opportunity to say that I still hate David as a love interest. Somehow, this book got me to hate him even more. But, I must admire the consistency of his characterization. While the average YA love interest would lose his jerk-qualities over the series, David stays consistently terrible.

A video review including this book will be on my Youtube channel in the coming weeks, at https://www.youtube.com/@ChloeFrizzle

Thanks to Netgalley and Katherine Tegen Books for a copy of this book to review. All options are my own.

Stevie Bell’s detective journey continues when she travels to London to visit her boyfriend who, it turns out, has a friend with a case for Stevie. Now, she only has a few days to solve a grisly axe murder from 1995, and save one of the survivors who goes missing after a chat with Stevie and her friends.

The Nine are not only a sketch comedy group, they are also the best of friends, sharing everything and doing everything together throughout their four years at Cambridge University, including many romantic entanglements. After the group graduates and prepares to go their separate ways for the first time in their adulthood, they decide to share one last getaway, at Merryweather, one of The Nine’s elaborate country mansion. But the group is changed forever when their game of hide and seek turns deadly, with two of The Nine found dead the next morning. The murder is blamed on a burglary gone wrong, but Angela, one of the surviving seven, is not so sure that’s true and her suspicion that one of her friends is a murderer remains no matter how much time passes.

Izzy, David’s new friend from University, is Angela’s niece, and after hearing so much about Stevie’s detective skills, Izzy begs for her help solving the murder that her aunt has recently raised suspicions about. But, when Angela goes missing shortly after talking with Stevie about that fateful evening, the stakes are raised, and Stevie finds herself racing against the clock to solve the mystery of The Nine and find Angela before something terrible happens to yet another member of the friend group. All the while, Stevie must also meet the expectations of her head of school, and try and make the most of her short visit with David, which is already not going as planned.

Unlike the Truly Devious murders, and The Box in the Woods murders, this one was quite so twisty and felt a lot easier to solve. That wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, because I still found the mystery riveting and enjoyed the entire read, but it is a little different. The story of The Nine was the highlight, and the flashback chapters were a joy to read, but it was also fun to read about these characters as adults, once Stevie and her friends meet them all.

I was less impressed with the main characters of the series in this iteration. It felt like much of the character growth we had previously seen was lost for some of the characters, and others were just plain dull throughout the course of the story. So whereas with the first new mystery in the series, The Box in the Woods, the mystery was a let down but being immersed in the characters’ lives again was the highlight, in Nine Liars the parts of the book that focus on our recurring characters was subpar, but the mystery was the star. For me, an engrossing, well-written mystery is better, so I still find Nine Liars to be the superior of Stevie’s stand-alone mysteries so far.

This will be an enjoyable mystery read for anyone, but will especially appeal to Truly Devious fans that can’t get enough Stevie Bell. And the best part, a cliff hanger ending pretty much ensures we will get at least one more foray into this delightful mystery universe.

Thank you for for the opportunity to read Nine Liars. This was my first Maureen Johnson book, but I will definitely go back and read the earlier books in this series. I would give it a strong 3.5 stars. It started a little slow, but picked up and kept me guessing for a good bit. I like the flashbacks and the description of The Nine group of characters and the setting details, Who doesn’t love a good British mystery sets in a historic manor?

It’s senior year for Stevie and while her friends are obsessed with applying to college, Stevie isn’t. Her boyfriend, David, is studying in London and all she wants is an excuse to go see him. When David arranges a study aboard trip for the whole group to come visit him, the gang & Stevie especially is stoked. Almost as soon as they arrive, David’s friend Izzy pleads with Stevie to find out what happened to her aunt’s friends, who were murdered in the 90s. The Nine as they were called, were celebrating graduating from Oxford when 2 of the group were murdered. They never found the murderer and now Izzy is asking for Stevie to help solve the cold case before something bad happens to her aunt.

I loved Stevie in the first 3 books of this series and still liked her in Box in the Woods. But she drove me nuts in this book. She has major insecurities which is totally realistic considering she’s 17, but they drive her to lie to her friends and other things, and I didn’t love that. Stevie just seemed to be in a rut and all of her actions seemed a bit forced to me.

The mystery of the nine though was super Agatha Christi-esque, which I loved. We first meet The Nine all at once, and while it was hard to keep track of them all at first, I ended up really loving them and their story. My biggest problem with this book though was that it felt like two separate stories being smashed together. I find it hard to believe that a group of 17-year old’s would be allowed on a study abroad trip, to London, with no chaperone, over Thanksgiving week. Add in that they were only in London for less than a week, and there is just no way they were getting through all that sightseeing plus investigating in that amount of time. I lived in London in college, and you could spend literal weeks doing things. I know this is a YA mystery, but the whole reason for being in London felt lackluster. I would have loved to just see the story of The Nine be its own locked room mystery, as I didn’t feel Stevie added much to it this go around.

As happy as I was to be back in the Truly Devious universe, felt that Stevie’s actions & the gang being in London was all a bit forced. While I thoroughly enjoyed the mystery of The Nine, and think Maureen wrote an amazing locked door mystery that honestly kept me guessing, Stevie’s characters especially just didn’t do it for me. I also felt that the whole David thing came out of nowhere, and missed getting to interact more with Nate, Janelle, and Vi.

Even though this wasn’t my favorite in the series, I would still read a 6th book if it comes out!

Nine Liars comes out December 27, 2022! Huge thank you to Katherine Tegen Books for my advanced copy in exchange for my honest opinion. If you liked this review please let me know either by commenting below or by visiting my instagram @speakingof.books.

Is there anything better than a Stevie Bell book? I always worry this will be the one that doesn’t work, but then MJ just covers every page with such clever plots and relatable moments (salad dressing hoodie) and I’m lost to it again. (Other notes: DAVID!!!!)

In the fifth installment of the Stevie Bell series, the gang once again leaves the hallowed, yet cursed, halls of Ellingham Academy under the pretense of a week-long study abroad trip in London. Of course, there are ulterior motives. Stevie's boyfriend David has spent his first semester of college in London studying International Affairs, and her best friends Janelle, Vi, and Nate are hoping to pad their college applications. Yet, as it always does, what seems to be a simple excursion free falls into a murder investigation.
Nine Liars is told in two timelines: one set in Cambridge, UK in 1995, and the other in the present day. The 1995 storyline follows "The Nine," a comedy group of nine best friends who met at Cambridge University, and became a relatively successful comedy act. Upon graduating, the Nine set off for Sebastian's family manor, Merryweather, where they have vacationed in the past. As only college students can do, the Nine drank well into the morning hours, playing a competitive game of group hide-and-seek amidst a violent rainstorm. When seven were found, the storm caused the power to go out, leaving the rest to reenter the manor and wait for the other two to find their own way home. Yet in the morning, when sober, although hungover Sebastian and Theo went looking for their missing friends (Rosie and Noel), they found them brutally murdered in the shed, which had supposedly been locked.
In present day, Stevie and her friends are applying for colleges and embarking upon their senior year of high school. When Stevie's boyfriend asks her to come visit for a week, they somehow manage to convince the headmistress Dr. Quinn to let them study abroad (with a very strict schedule). But of course, when they arrive, David's British friend Izzy has a different plan: getting Stevie to solve the murder that happened 25 years ago to the Nine--one of whom is Izzy's aunt Angela.
Stevie is reluctant to involve herself with another murder; she only has a week with David, and Dr. Quinn is breathing down all their necks, but she's Stevie Bell, and inconvenience has never stopped her before. But shortly after talking to Angela about the fateful night years ago, Angela goes missing, causing Izzy to call together the Nine to find her aunt, and maybe solve Rosie and Noel's murders in the meantime.
Will Stevie be able to work her mystery magic on foreign soil? On a time crunch? With not only her future, but her friends' futures at stake? Or will the lies of the Nine and her own pile up until she can't find a way out?

Although this wasn't my favorite of the Truly Devious series, I did like it better than A Box in the Woods. I think Nine Liars captures more of the original trilogy's essence, and does a good job with delayed reveals and suspense. However, I did find this book to be quite repetitive, especially during The Nine points of view. The various police reports, flashbacks, and telling the same story over and over became dull, especially when no new facts were revealed each time. I also wanted more growth from Stevie as a character. It seems like every book she faces the same character flaw: not being entirely honest or open with her friends, and every time it hurts her. There were so many instances that made me side with Janelle and David rather than Stevie, and it's becoming annoying to constantly be in Stevie's head when you know she's making the same mistakes over and over.
Nevertheless, the massive cliffhanger at the end of this book will of course have me returning for Stevie Bell #6.

Thank you to NetGalley and Katherine Tegen Books/HarperCollins for a digital copy of this arc. Nine Liars by Maureen Johnson is out December 26, 2022.

I didn't know I how much needed more Stevie and company in my life until I saw this book was coming out! This book continues the series in a new location, England, and Johnson does an amazing job with this book! The mystery surrounding a double murder at a country estate was so interesting. Johnson captures the time period so well. If you loved Truly Devious this book is another great addition to the series. Brilliant. Will be purchasing it for my library.

Maureen Johnson's Truly Devious series is my go-to rec for any YA readers wanting to read mystery. I love Stevie and I'm always game for new adventures. My fave is still the original trilogy, and while I enjoyed Box in the Woods, it didn't quite have the same impact as the original. I feel the same way about this as well. While it was still entertaining, and it's always nice to have the gang back together, some parts felt a little contrived. Still getting this for our collection because this is bound to be a popular read!

It was a good page-turner and I liked revisiting the Ellingham gang, even if some of the situations they found themselves in seem contrived. What I could have done without is the abrupt ending.

This series continues to enthrall me. Looking for smart, flawed and completely driven protagonists? Look no further. This time our hero Stevie makes an over the top gesture that’s deposits her and her friends in London. She convinces everyone it is for serious studious reasons, but knows she’s really following her heart. Luckily, there is mayhem and madness and Stevie as always, saves the day.

An English country manor murder and Truly Devious mash-up? I'll take seconds please! The entire gang is back in this installment and visiting David in England when a cold case falls in their lap. Veronica Mars would be proud.

The book flashes back and forth between "the Nine," a group of nine university theatre students in 1995 at an English country manor celebrating graduation and Stevie and the gang in the present planning a trip to visit David and see the sights.

I really liked that all the Truly Devious gang was featured this time around, but I think I'm ready to let Vi & Janelle go. They aren't very interesting characters or much help to Stevie and the "they" pronouns for Janelle are super confusing to read. Stevie can carry the story solo at this point with occasional help from Nate and David (who have small roles this time around). Nate comes out as A-sexual in this book for some unnecessary reason. It felt really out of place and came out in a preachy forced sort of way instead of as a natural part of his character arc. David is still trying to get this act together and figure out his feelings for Stevie, but I'm still Team David.

Again, good luck solving this mystery before Stevie. I flagged some clues and completely missed others. When mysteries are too easy to solve, there no fun to read. Johnson never disappoints with her ability to weave a compelling whodunit.

Good news! There's a bit of a cliffhanger at the end which tells me this isn't the last we've seen of Stevie and the gang! I'm looking forward to the next book in this amazing YA mystery series!

Mystery is not my favorite genre, but I’m convinced that if Maureen Johnson wrote all the mystery books, it might be! Nine Liars is the fifth book in the Truly Devious series, and somehow it was even better than book 4, The Box in the Woods.

The novel follows Stevie and her friends to the United Kingdom, where they are supposed to be learning about history and furthering their studies. When David’s friend Izzy mentions that her aunt was connected to a murder mystery in the English countryside during the 1990s, Stevie’s interest is peaked, and her friends know it’s only a matter of time before she’s on the case.

If I’m being completely honest, the original three books in the Truly Devious series were not phenomenal reads for me. Don’t get me wrong, they were 3-star reads, which is a good book in my opinion. However, this series is one that gets increasingly better over time. When I received an ARC of The Box in the Woods, I’d figured I would try it, but wasn’t wholeheartedly invested in the series. After reading it, I was willing to read more in the series. Now, after reading Nine Liars, I need more books in this series! It completely blew me out of the water!

One thing I love about these novels is that they typically have two alternating storylines. We read a little about the mystery that happened in the past, then we read about Stevie’s life now. This pattern makes the books so compelling in my opinion. As a reader, I found myself more invested in the mystery timeline at the beginning, but the more I read the more invested I was in the present timeline as well.

Furthermore, the mystery in this novel was riveting! The suspense built well over the course of book, and I literally couldn’t stop reading. I couldn’t guess any of the big reveals, yet the series of events was also completely plausible. The cast of characters were dynamic and added a lot to the story. I sometimes feel like authors write very similar characters when they need more murder suspects, but that was not the case with Nine Liars.

Additionally, the characters that we already knew and loved were developed further. I adore the fact that Stevie is a flawed, yet relatable character. Truthfully I don’t think we see enough of this in novels, especially YA novels. We somehow expect the characters to be perfect or stereotypically morally grey, but in many ways, Stevie is just an average teenager who makes mistakes just like anyone else. Her character development throughout this novel drew my emotions into the story even more, and as always, I appreciate the authenticity of reading about a character with anxiety.

Finally, the cherry on top of the cake, there is an ace (asexual) character in this book! This is kind of funny because, at the beginning of this book, I was reading about this character and thought, “Wow, they really seem like they could be ace!” However, it had not been mentioned in the previous books, so I was happily shocked when this character comes out as ace later in the novel. I don’t want to spoil who it is, but I felt like this identity lines up with what we know about this character from the previous novels, and I was so elated to see this representation!

Overall, there is not a single thing I didn’t love about this novel! Maureen Johnson, I sincerely hope you plan on writing another book in this series because I need it yesterday!