[Book Review] Nine Liars by Maureen Johnson & Manuscript Coffee Sherlock Holmes Blend

Title: Nine Liars
Series: Truly Devious #5
Author: Maureen Johnson
Publication date: December 27th 2022
Page Count: 464 pages
Age Range: YA (death, blood, murder)
How I got my hot little hands on it: Received a review copy
Publisher’s page: Nine Liars

Stevie Bell solved the case of Truly Devious, and now she’s taking her detecting skills abroad when she becomes embroiled in a mystery from 1990s England. Another pulse-pounding and laugh-out-loud stand-alone mystery from New York Times bestselling author Maureen Johnson.

Senior year at Ellingham Academy for Stevie Bell isn’t going well. Her boyfriend, David, is studying in London. Her friends are obsessed with college applications. With the cold case of the century solved, Stevie is adrift. There is nothing to distract her from the questions pinging around her brain—questions about college, love, and life in general.

Relief comes when David invites Stevie and her friends to join him for study abroad, and his new friend Izzy introduces her to a double-murder cold case. In 1995, nine friends from Cambridge University went to a country house and played a drunken game of hide-and-seek. Two were found in the woodshed the next day, murdered with an ax.

The case was assumed to be a burglary gone wrong, but one of the remaining seven saw something she can’t explain. This was no break-in. Someone’s lying about what happened in the woodshed.

Seven suspects. Two murders. One killer still playing a deadly game.

My Review

Nine Liars is Veronica Mars meets BBC’s Sherlock. It’s the 5th book in the Truly Devious YA detective series, but can be read as a standalone (I’ve never read the other books and was able to jump right in).

It’s Stevie Bell’s senior year and while her friends are busy making plans and applying to colleges, she just can’t get her head in the game. She’s at loose ends since solving her last mystery and finds herself unable to focus on school, lost on how to turn her detective skills into a college acceptance. She also really misses her boyfriend, David, who left to study in England. Luckily, David has a plan for them to see each other and also give her some much-needed distraction under the guise of a “study abroad” week in London with her friends. Also luckily, his friend Izzy has a murder mystery for Stevie to throw herself into.

Izzy’s aunt was part of a very close circle of friends at Cambridge who formed a comedy group called “The Nine”. The Nine were as close as any friends could be, living together in the same house and all dating each other. In the summer of ’95, a weekend in the country starts with a drunk game of hide-and-seek and ends with two of the nine being murdered with an ax and discovered in the woodshed. The killer was never found. Nine Liars alternates between current-day Stevie and friends, and flashbacks to that fateful weekend. It’s a bit jarring and disjointed at first going back and forth with seemingly no connection, but eventually things begin to flow together and it works very well in drawing the reader into the mystery.

Stevie can come off as a “not like other girls” girl – confused by makeup, only wearing hoodies, and scandalized by the idea of wearing anything besides the plainest of cotton underwear. It’s not that she doesn’t care about these kinds of things, because plenty of girls don’t, it’s how often it’s emphasized until it becomes a defining personality trait. She also wears the same salad-dressing-stained black hoodie every day for a week straight while visiting her boyfriend in London (I was begging her to at least give it a rinse in the sink – she wore the thing while meeting witnesses and even when visiting the country estate as a guest/investigator). It began to toe the line of grating but someone managed to fall just this side of quirky and charming in an “everything else is just transport” Sherlock-y way.

There are a lot of characters to keep straight in Nine Liars. Outside of Stevie, David, and Izzy, we also have Stevie’s friends Janelle, Vi, and Nate. Also there’s The Nine to keep straight, and well, there’s nine of them. All of the current-day parts of the book are told through Stevie’s perspective, but the flashbacks are through the perspective of multiple members of The Nine. While it’s a bit to juggle, the author does a great job of making it manageable and not too confusing.

Overall, I ended up really liking Nine Liars and can’t wait for the next book in the series (especially after that ending! Reader beware, this book ends on a cliffhanger, so if you’re a person that would be bothered by that be forewarned). The mystery as it’s presented is extremely engaging and following along with Stevie for that “aha!” moment had me glued to the pages. I really enjoyed the murder mystery, Stevie’s detective work, and most of the characters (I’m looking at you, David). Definitely a book that draws you in and keeps your attention until the very last letter.

Since I couldn’t help but make the Sherlock comparisons in Nine Liars, how could I recommend any other coffee besides Manuscript Coffee Sherlock Holmes Blend. It’s a medium blend with some very interesting flavor notes including earthy rosemary, fruity blueberry, and just a touch of sweet maple.