Jennifer Mathieu has the perfect combination of skill and curiosity every good writer needs. On top of that, she considers teens and young adults, who make up both her characters and her readers, "fascinating." Mathieu's first young-adult novel was The Truth About Alice; it examined the results of malicious gossip on a girl in high school. Released in the summer of 2014, it received an energetic reception. Mathieu's newest release, Devoted, out this summer, is about a girl from a restrictive religious movement. It's also finding an eager audience. The Truth About Alice and Devoted are hardly Mathieu's first experience with writing success; when she was in kindergarten, a story she wrote about an ape dancing inside a library won a contest in Cricket magazine.