Review: Also Known As

Also Known As by Robin Benway
Age Group: Young Adult
Genre: Contemporary Romance, Mystery
Release Date: February 26, 2013
Buy Links:

Amazon

Book Description:

Being a 16-year-old safecracker and active-duty daughter of international spies has its moments, good and bad. Pros: Seeing the world one crime-solving adventure at a time. Having parents with super cool jobs. Cons: Never staying in one place long enough to have friends or a boyfriend. But for Maggie Silver, the biggest perk of all has been avoiding high school and the accompanying cliques, bad lunches, and frustratingly simple locker combinations.

Then Maggie and her parents are sent to New York for her first solo assignment, and all of that changes. She'll need to attend a private school, avoid the temptation to hack the school's security system, and befriend one aggravatingly cute Jesse Oliver to gain the essential information she needs to crack the case . . . all while trying not to blow her cover.

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This book was 350 pages? Really? Maybe I shouldn’t start a review with a question, but this was another book that I basically devoured in a few hours time. That should tell you that I really, really liked it. But in case it didn’t, I REALLY REALLY liked this book. It was light-hearted, it was funny, it was warm, it was full of really interesting characters.

While there was some spy-related stuff, it’s not the kind of tense espionage one would see in a novel about an adult spy. It’s more focused on the main character, Maggie, trying to figure out how to balance pretending to be a normal teenage girl—something she has NO experience with—and not disappointing her spy parents.



It’s also host to several other colorful characters, including her new best friend forever, Roux (pronounced Roo, but don’t ask her if it’s like kanga! She’ll kick your butt!), who is very much a latch-key rich kid who rarely see her parents, because they’re off gallivanting around the world with their lotto money.

Roux has no other friends, and has a complex background of her own that made her feel very vibrant and realistic to me. She also has this tendency to be over-dramatic.

But that’s okay, because she’s hilarious. I laughed out loud many times. And then there’s Jesse Oliver, who is Maggie’s “assignment” that she winds up falling in love with. He, too, is a well-layered character. I honestly wouldn’t mind reading a series of books about this trio of teens, because they were that entertaining. No idea if Benway has plans to do something like that, but I am honestly crossing my fingers. I’d buy every one.

Basically what I’m trying to tell you is that if you haven’t read this book yet, go. Go go go go go. You will love this one if you like young adult fiction.

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Author Bio:

I'm the author of "Audrey, Wait!" and "The Extraordinary Secrets of April, May & June." My new book "Also Known As" will be released on February 26, 2013. I live in Los Angeles with my extremely stubborn shih tzu, Hudson. I've gotten a lot better at cooking. I still love coffee. We should be friends.

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