A solid recommendation from my colleague Elizabeth. Truly Devious follows true crime aficionado Stevie as she is accepted to Ellingham Academy, a prestigious (and free! what a dream) school founded on the guiding principle that learning is a game, and the site of unsolved crimes that occurred in the 1930s... crimes that Stevie is determined to solve, despite decades of fruitless sleuthing by professionals.

Between the alternating timelines/narratives and the dark academia atmosphere (my catnip), this book had me from the very beginning, despite the fact that it's the first in a series and spends a lot of time laying the groundwork. But right when I thought, "hmm, I like this, but nothing much is happening, really," someone turned up dead, and the plot ratcheted up to a conclusion that leaves, well, two subsequent books' worth of information to be desired. (And, I hear, yet another on the way.)

Aside from the setting (which is fantastic--did I mention the lavish old houses? the creepy statuary? the secret tunnels??), Stevie is by far my favorite thing about Truly Devious. I admire her tenacity, intelligence, and frank outlook on life, and I think that her struggles with anxiety are presented well, both in terms of realism and the way they add to her characterization, feeding into her interest in true crime and her desire to seek answers and certainty. I also think that enrolling in a fancy school for the sole purpose of researching her special interest, about which she has read multiple books and 8,000+ pages of transcripts, is high-key autistic behavior. Whether or not she was intended to be, I headcanon her as at least spectrum-adjacent.

Eager to continue this series.