Books like Truly Devious
What should you read after Maureen Johnson’s novel? It depends on what you loved most about it.
- Maureen Johnson
- 2018
- YA mystery
What did you love about it?
Choosing one reorders everything below.
Best books to read after Truly Devious
Ranked overall. Pick what you loved above to re-rank them.
Best overall matchOne of Us is Lying
Karen M. McManus
Five students, one dead classmate, and a school where everyone has something to hide. The contemporary end of the same shelf, with rotating narrators instead of a detective.
- A school for prodigies
- A cliffhanger ending
- Golden-age mystery homage
- No historical cold case
Best for the campus atmosphereThe Secret History
Donna Tartt
The adult ancestor of every murder-at-an-elite-school novel. If the Ellingham setting was the draw — old money, cleverness, a closed circle — this is the source.
- A school for prodigies
- A cold case decades old
- Two timelines braided
- 560 pages, slow burn
Great matchThe Westing Game
Ellen Raskin
Sixteen heirs, a rigged puzzle and a dead millionaire who set the whole thing up. The purest puzzle-box on this list and still delightful at any age.
- Riddles and ciphers
- Golden-age mystery homage
- A cold case decades old
- Written for young readers
Worth a look — with a warningThe Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
Stieg Larsson
A disappearance from decades ago, a family estate and an investigator who works through old photographs. The cold-case structure, in a far more adult register.
- A cold case decades old
- Two timelines braided
- An amateur detective with anxiety
- Graphic sexual violence
Great matchWe Were Liars
E. Lockhart
A private island, a wealthy family and a summer the narrator cannot remember. Short, sharp, and built entirely around what you are not being told.
- A cliffhanger ending
- A cold case decades old
- Two timelines braided
- Mannered, poetic style
Great matchThe Name of the Star
Maureen Johnson
Johnson's other series, and the fastest way to more of this narrator's voice: an American girl at a London school during a Jack the Ripper copycat spree.
- An amateur detective with anxiety
- A school for prodigies
- A cold case decades old
- Ghosts, so genuinely supernatural
Worth a look — with a warningThe Invention of Hugo Cabret
Brian Selznick
A boy, a locked notebook and a mechanical puzzle in a Paris train station, told half in pictures. Shares Stevie's love of a mystery made of objects.
- Riddles and ciphers
- A cold case decades old
- Illustrated, for younger readers
Best for the golden-age homageAnd Then There Were None
Agatha Christie
The book Stevie's whole worldview is built on. Ten strangers, an island, a nursery rhyme, and the tightest plot Christie ever wrote.
- Golden-age mystery homage
- Riddles and ciphers
- A cold case decades old
- No modern narrator to like
Great matchThe Diviners
Libba Bray
1920s New York, a serial killer with an occult pattern, and a heroine with far more front than Stevie. Long, atmospheric and stuffed with period detail.
- A cold case decades old
- A cliffhanger ending
- Golden-age mystery homage
- Supernatural rather than deductive
Worth a look — with a warningSadie
Courtney Summers
A missing girl, a podcast reconstructing her trail, and no comfort at the end. It is the true-crime instinct behind Truly Devious taken entirely seriously.
- Two timelines braided
- An amateur detective with anxiety
- A cliffhanger ending
- Child abuse on the page
Great matchThe Naturals
Jennifer Lynn Barnes
Teenagers with a gift for reading people, recruited by the FBI to work cold cases. Sillier premise, similar pleasures, and it moves like a rocket.
- A school for prodigies
- A cold case decades old
- An amateur detective with anxiety
- Improbable FBI premise
Great matchThe Secret Keepers
Trenton Lee Stewart
An old watch, a hidden city and a boy following a chain of clues laid a generation earlier. Gentle, ingenious and satisfying if you liked the puzzle more than the murder.
- Riddles and ciphers
- A cold case decades old
- Middle-grade, no violence
Great matchThe Archived
Victoria Schwab
Schwab's library of the dead, where a girl's job is to keep the past from waking up. Atmospheric YA that scratches the same secret-institution itch.
- A school for prodigies
- A cold case decades old
- A cliffhanger ending
- Paranormal, not deductive
What should you read after Truly Devious?
Truly Devious by Maureen Johnson works on several levels at once, and which book you should read next depends on which of those levels got you. For most readers the closest match is One of Us is Lying by Karen M. McManus — five students, one dead classmate, and a school where everyone has something to hide. The contemporary end of the same shelf, with rotating narrators instead of a detective.
If what stayed with you was a school for prodigies, read The Secret History by Donna Tartt instead: the adult ancestor of every murder-at-an-elite-school novel. If the Ellingham setting was the draw — old money, cleverness, a closed circle — this is the source. The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin is the other strong option — sixteen heirs, a rigged puzzle and a dead millionaire who set the whole thing up. The purest puzzle-box on this list and still delightful at any age.
Loved something else?
Start from any book and we’ll build the list around your reasons.
Find my next book →NextBook is a participant in the Amazon Associates Program. We earn from qualifying purchases, at no extra cost to you. It doesn’t affect which books we recommend or how we rank them.
More “what to read next” lists
- Books like 1984
- Books like 2312
- Books like A Clockwork Orange
- Books like A Darker Shade of Magic
- Books like A Gentleman in Moscow
- Books like A Little Life
- Books like A Man Called Ove
- Books like A Memory Called Empire
- Books like A Wrinkle in Time
- Books like All Systems Red
- Books like All the Bright Places
- Books like Altered Carbon