mortal_wombat 's review for:

Truly, Devious by Maureen Johnson

4.0

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Dumb, but readable. I don't know why the name Stevie bothers me so much, but it's incredibly annoying. The character (Ellie) who puts babysocks in her hair and can't play the saxophone is absolutely too much and I hate her every second she's mentioned. Nate is a solid character, but not fleshed out enough. Book devotes too much time to character development. Maureen Johnson is known to be obsessive with her ideas, and while I think that's great...it leads to some really annoying inability to self-edit pointless or eye-rolling details. This book was also longer than it should have been for the amount of plot there was in it. The book didn't actually start until 2/3 in, but then ended on a cliffhanger. It really could have avoided this by cutting out half a book's worth of fluff. It really hit its stride then, though.