Fresh off solving the murders at her boarding school (the current ones and the ones from the 1930s), Stevie is invited to solve four murders that happened at a summer camp in 1978. 

I loved the original Truly Devious series and I love that there’s another one. Technically this book could probably be a stand alone, but for character development and to understand the references it’s best if you’ve read the first three. 

This book is somewhere in between medium to fast pace in my opinion. It’s primarily told from Stevie’s perspective, although it occasionally goes back to 1978. 

I absolutely did not expect the twist of who did it. There’s a bunch of information leading up to it but we don’t know all the evidence until it’s revealed by Stevie. 

NAZI’S?!?!

Not really related to the plot of the story, but I thought Nicole was so annoying and unnecessary. I thought maybe she’d redeem herself at the end but nope. 

I really liked this book, maybe more than the first three (which I really liked). I also love the characters. However, the clues weren't laid out in advance like they were in the earlier books; instead, there was a bit of an infodump at the end.

There are several things I loved about this book. For one, i just love summer camp horror. I love that even if you didn’t read the previous trilogy, there’s still enough background information that you could read it as a stand alone. the bringing back of characters made my heart happy. the development of friendship as a side plot made me so giddy. stevie is smart and has gotten less annoying with each book. this book was so interesting from start to finish. it started strong and it never stopped. there was nary a dull moment. the reveal was a wild twist but it made so much sense. i would absolutely recommend this book even if you haven’t read truly devious. also maureen johnson, if you’re reading this, please please write more about stevie and her friends. and if anyone else is reading this, like hbo or hulu or netflix, please consider a limited series of this book. it would work so well as a tv series. gosh i loved this book. please read it and please read truly devious. it’s light enough that it could satisfy people who love thrillers but don’t like the horror feeling but not too light that well seasoned suspense/thriller/mystery lovers would hate it. it’s a great middle ground for everyone. there’s so much more i could say about this book but i’m going to leave it at this. 

Honestly I didn’t know where this book would go, I felt like it would fall flat after the series. I felt like it wouldn’t hold up to the previous books but honeslty  this is probably my second favourite book in the series, first one being the vanishing stair. I felt like we really saw more into who Stevie was, whereas with the first three books we really saw her as this crime obsessed kid. It was nice to see the author dive more into Stevie’s anxiety problems, and as a kid with anxiety I could totally relate. I loved the little small town “Hallmark” vibe of the book. I loved how we learned more about Stevie’s triggers for her anxiety, and I love that she FINALLY got a love interest. I felt like her ending up with David was the perfect ending. Overall, I did feel like the mystery was sort of an afterthought as we really only see a progression in the solving of the case after around page 250.I didn’t mind this however because of how enthralled I was by Stevie’s personal life and her problems. I felt like the ending of the case was very satisfying. ABSOLUTELY LOVE THE PLOT TWIST. And I felt like Stevie finally relaxing and finally admitting her true love to David was an amazing ending. I hope that their will be another book with these amazing characters in it. (Maybe David was hinting at something at the end, I’d love to see Stevie solve some “real life” murder mysteries.) 

This is the fourth book in the Truly Devious series, but as far as the mystery goes, it's a standalone.

Life has moved on for Stevie and her friends since she solved the Ellingham mystery and has gone home for the summer. It looks like she has a long boring summer of working at the grocery deli ahead of her when she gets an email from Carson, the owner of a summer camp in Massachusetts. 40 years before, 4 camp counselors were murdered in the woods, and the case is still unsolved. Carson wants to bring Stevie in to work at the camp but also to work on a podcast with him where they try to solve the case themselves. With nothing better to lure her to say no, Stevie agrees, as long as her friends Janelle and Nate can come with her.

So now we basically have the Adventures of Stevie, Janelle, and Nate at Camp, with cameo appearances by David. Stevie is very interested in the case, but quickly finds out that working on a case where the people affected are still alive and hurting is much different than working on one where all the people directly involved are dead.

I did enjoy this, but we're sold all of this stuff about the podcast in the beginning and then there's very little work that's actually done on it, other than Stevie's investigating. In fact, the guy who brings her there plays very little part in the story as a whole. But it was still entertaining, and the core group of characters is still as strong as ever (I'm still on the fence about David). I look forward to seeing where she brings them next.