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Reviewed by: Becky Hibbert, Elementary School Librarian Title: The Box in the Woods Author: Maureen Johnson Publisher: Katherine Tegen Books
Year: 2021 Good for Grades: 8-Adult Genre/Type of Book: Mystery fiction
Content Warnings, or things that other School Librarians should be aware of: Mild language/violence Recommended for a school library: Yes Reason(s) for choosing the book: I was a huge fan of the previous three books in the "Truly Devious" series and I couldn't wait to get my hands on this one. If you were tasked by the publisher with writing a short quote for the back cover of this book, what would it be: Just when you thought summer camp was old news, an unsolved murder rears its ugly head and clever teens have to band together to both solve the mystery - and save themselves.
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Review:
Having read the Truly Devious trilogy, I knew that I would be in for a treat for this next installation. I love the quirky, Nancy Drew-like view of the world by the protagonist, Stevie Bell, and I was very eager to get back to her and her rag-tag gang of friends at Ellingham Academy (which I secretly wish existed in the real world). This novel took Stevie back home, away from school where she had shown a knack for solving both old *and* new murders. This book landed Stevie in a summer camp tainted by the as-yet-unsolved murder of camp counselors in the 1970s. Having received a personal invite to the summer camp to come and attempt to solve this decades old-murder personally motivates Stevie to solve it, along with the help of her classmates from Ellingham Academy.
This one definitely had me worrying if Johnson was going to take a big leap and kill off one of the main characters; I was starting to sweat if Stevie and Crew would be able to escape this mystery and close out the summer unscathed. For any fans of American Horror Story, this was a far less gruesome approach to the season titled "Camp Redwood." Since the diverse cast of mostly teenage characters are fully realized with relatable problems and realistic dialogue, I have little doubt that a variety of different students could find ways to relate to at least a single character in this series. A love triangle present in earlier books is present in this one, but it doesn’t deter from the plot in the slightest. For readers who've read Johnson's previous novels in this series, readers will only continue to love the characters. There are a number of moving pieces to the puzzle that is the mystery, and as new pieces are revealed, I became more and more engaged and determined to figure it out ahead of time (which I didn’t). This whole series is truly excellent and I would wholeheartedly recommend for a MS/HS library.
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