Recent Reads: #13 and #14

Teenaged girl boarding school spy books!

Title: I'd Tell You I Love You But Then I'd Have To Kill You
Title: Cross My Heart and Hope to Spy
Author: Aly Carter
Genre: Young Adult

Why I Almost Didn't Pick Them Up but then did Anyways: Well, I was in the Barnes & Noble, looking to burn plastic fake money (ah, birthday and christmas gift cards... I'm a stretching those suckers out) and the sequel was propped up prominently on an end-cap. And the blurb on the back turned me off. I think I've just been reading things wrong lately but it really made it sound like Cammie had a secret love affair with some boy and he turned out to be a double agent and she and her friends had to prove to the CIA that Cammie was innocent in the whole thing... but no. It's much much lighter than that. Both books are. They're about cute teenaged girls who watch Gilmore Girls and Buffy and Alias but who also happen to be kick-ass little super-spies in training. Oh, and they pretty much no nothing about boys. Which is kinda bad. Luckily, I looked a little more closely at them the next time I found myself wandering aimlessly through Barnes & Noble and finally bought the first one.


Choice Quotes:

"But then I looked at the woman who had raised me and who, rumor has it, once sweet-talked a Russian dignitary into dressing in drag and carrying a beach ball full of liquid nitrogen under his shirt like a pregnant lady, and I knew I was sufficiently outgunned..."

"We'd been studying boys for almost an entire academic year, and yet I didn't feel any closer to understanding a culture where people insult you, then tease you, ignore you for weeks, and then ask you to the movies!"


Final Thought: Very cute, very fun, light books. I swear, I kept laughing out loud while reading that second one. Every time Zach said something and Cammie was like "How did you know that?!" and he'd just point to himself and go"Spy" I laughed (and fully would have kicked his ass had I been Cammie). Oh, boy spies. Mayhem! Hee. Also, Cammie's Mom (the school headmistress) is a total Sydney Bristow clone and there's nothing but awesome in that. Nothing at all.