Nine Liars

all my homies HATE david rn

FUN

feels like those old disney channel episodes where one show would go on a trip and do a special episode visiting a different show

anyways she better hurry up w book 6

If I knew how the book was structured I wouldn't have picked it up.

Who reads an over 400 pages long book for about 70 pages worth of plot?

It started promising with the introduction of the murder and the Nine, but then so many pages of nothing with them doing their silly London trip. I don't read ya murder mystery for relationship problems and facts about brit pop. Don't even get me started on Stevie. And then suddenly (400 pages in) she solves the murder and nothing, again.

I read this as a stand-alone, so I don't know anything about the other murders and character backgrounds, but in this book, the main character was such a bad friend and everything was chaos.

I liked that all the characters seemed realistic by having their own lives.

Again if it is your favourite book series and you'd read an entire book to get a life update, than you might like it.

This could've been absolutely excellent if it had focused more on building up and crafting the mystery and less on whatever Johnson thought she was writing between Stevie and David. It is not that romance being the focus is bad but it is certainly not a good choice when: 1. it is not a romance series and 2. was not handled well to begin with. This is to say, this could have functioned better as a bonus novella than as a genuine instalment of the series.

If Johnson wanted to write a UK-set mystery, she could have gone back to writing the "Shades of London" series, the 4th book of which has been floating around for a decade. Or maybe she is setting up a crossover which seems trendy in YA at the moment but against which I cannot advise strongly enough.

I'm devastated to be writing this but I am so disappointed by this book. I loved the first four and I was so attached to all the characters but this book just took away all of the fun and lovable aspects of the Truly Devious series and threw them away. We spend the first 250 pages of the book learning the history around London landmarks instead of getting to know the case Stevie will be investigating, and on top of that, she has been reduced to the girl with the boyfriend as Nate so aptly puts it at the beginning of the book. Most of the book is spent inside of Stevie's brain wondering if David is cheating on her (he isn't) and worrying about that rather than putting us into the heart of the mystery as the other books did. I saw there's a sixth book coming at some point so I'm really hoping we return to the good parts of this series in that book.

Stevie Bell and her friends are off on another adventure, this time on a one week trip to England where Stevie is planning to see David, her long distance boyfriend. When they arrive, David introduces them to Izzy, and she tells them about a mystery surrounding the death of two of her aunt's friends when they visited an estate not long before their graduation from college. Stevie hoped for an intimate reunion with David, but most of their time is spent on obligations for school and chasing down clues in Izzy's mystery. When Izzy's aunt goes missing, Stevie and her friends must amp up their search for answers, leaving Stevie wondering if she is going to have time to solve the mystery or find any private moments with David.

Nine Liars is an engaging YA mystery/suspense novel with some romance thrown in. Each book in this series has moved the story of Stevie and her friends along, so that now they are nearing the end of high school and must face changes as they approach college. There is a nice parallel between "The Nine," who were dealing with the same kind of changes as they prepared for graduation from college. At the beginning of the book, every other chapter details events from that fateful weekend in 1995 when two of "The Nine" turn up dead. The alternating chapters are about Stevie and her friends' very atmospheric visit to England. Later chapters include the statements made to police. Overall, Nine Liars is a fun story that keeps the reader guessing right up to the very last sentence.

Rating and review to come once the HarperCollins Union strike has ended and the Union's demands have been met.

I've been a fan of this series since the first book. They're fun, twisty mysteries that, while predictable, always keep me entertained. This latest installment was no exception. I loved being back in Stevie's mindset as she tried to puzzle out clues and fit everything together. Admittedly, as the series goes on, you have to suspend your disbelief a bit because there's no way a high schooler keeps solving these decades-long cold cases, but it's whatever. It wasn't my favorite mystery of the bunch, but I did like how it all wrapped up in the end. I couldn't figure out the murderer, so watching Stevie piece it together was satisfying. However, the end of the book had me rolling my eyes and not looking forward to whatever drama will unfold in the next book.

maureen johnson will pay for ending the book there