Thursday, December 8, 2011

Spying Girls Don't Do Normal

I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You
by Ally Carter
New York : Hyperion Paperbacks, 2007 (orig. pub. 2006).

**some spoilers follow**

Cammie goes to the Gallagher Academy, which everyone thinks is a snobby prep school. In reality, it's a spy school. Besides normal classes, Cammie and her friends Bex and Liz learn several different languages, disguise, and how to avoid a tail. Then, she goes out on a school project and meets a cute boy - and her friends decide to make him their extracurricular activity. Is he trying to infiltrate their school, or just a normal guy? Commence background checks, stakeouts, and laughs!

This is the first book of the Gallagher Girls series, which I've been meaning to read for awhile. The plot moves right along, while Cammie throws in some one liners about her school and her life (I am still waiting to learn how to kill a man with a piece of uncooked spaghetti). Other than Cammie, who is narrating, the characters fell a little flat. Liz is a stereotypical nerd. Macey had some potential as the bad girl who's out of the loop in spy school, but there was more of a sudden switch in her behavior rather than any development. Josh seems a little contradictory to me, and I got the idea that Cammie liked the idea of being a normal girl than him specifically. Still, the idea of her having to hide her identity and school from him makes for a unique situation that I think teens can still identify with, as many feel that they are hiding their true selves from others. A story with a lot of potential; I will certainly read the next book in the series.

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