Breaking the Rules

There are certain things I count on.  

For example:

• My children will answer the telephone if I call instead of texting.  They recognize that something is up if I'm using the phone the way Alexander Graham Bell intended.
• In every episode of Law and Order, 20 minutes after the hour the criminal has been identified and the hunt is on.
• The school bus drives past my window every morning and every afternoon at just about the same time.
• Mysteries finish with the solution to the crime at hand.

When things go awry, I become stressed.  I'm not a big fan of chaos or change.  I like knowing what I'm getting into.  

Why am I telling you this?  Because I'm aggravated right now, after finishing a YA book I didn't realize was a YA book until I looked at the spine when the writing seems just a little off.  The TEEN marking above MYSTERY explained it all.  There was kissing angst and clothing angst and parent angst with little lessons stuck in between the action.  I was enjoying the story and not at all embarrassed by the fact that I was holding a children's book; The Fault in Our Stars is one of my favorite stories.

I curled up in my chair and joined the kids at the private school hidden away in the mountains of Vermont, a cozy mystery with interesting characters.  Maureen Johnson is apparently a prolific YA novelist, and her Truly, Devious is the hole into which I fell.  

It was a lovely hole.  The print was large enough.  The book itself was brand new.  The writing was crisp and, sometimes, surprisingly deep.  The mystery came closer and closer to a solution..... and then she stopped.

In media res.  The book ended.  I'm bereft.  

In searching out the link, I discovered that Truly, Devious is the first in a 5 series opus.  There was no such designation on the book itself.  I continued to be peeved.  Shifting my search to the Pima County Library site, I found that I could reserve the physical books without any problem.  The ebooks, however, were all in use, with waiting lists.

I'm left with two thoughts: 

•  I really really really want to know what happens next and I want to know NOW.
•  I'm thwarted in that endeavor because teens read books on-line

There are certain rules that should not be broken.