Rowena’s review of Also Known As by Robin Benway.
Main Character: Maggie Silver
Love Interest: Jesse Oliver
Series: ??
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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.
This was such a fun book. A book that I was glad that I requested and glad that I read because I thought it was so cute. Maggie is a 16 year old spy who moves from city to city cracking safes for the Collective. The Collective is a spy agency that sends its agents out to fight the good fight. To keep people safe and to make sure that the bad guys are put away. Maggie’s next assignment takes her to New York City where Armand Oliver is getting ready to print a story about the Collective. This story will name names and put Maggie and everyone she holds dear in danger so her assignment is to get close to Armand’s son, gain access to their home and crack his safe and take any evidence that she could find. She also has to find out who the mole is from inside the Collective because Armand is definitely getting his information from somewhere…
So Maggie is enrolled in the same school that Jesse goes to and she gets to work. She makes a friend named Roux, who is a girl the school outcast and let me tell you, Roux was the best thing that ever happened to Maggie. To say that I adored Roux is putting it lightly because I absolutely, completely adored her. Every drunken, heartfelt and crazy adventure that these two had made this book just that much more entertaining.
The main character Maggie had a really engaging voice. She made it easy to follow along with the story and I really liked how smart she was and how confident she was in her talents with the Collective. Even when she’s a fish out of water with the whole going to school for the first time with people her own age and having to blend in, she was great.
I really liked the way that Robin Benway wrote this story. It was light, it was funny and it was easy to read. The story was great, the characters were charming and I definitely recommend this book. This book would have gotten an A but there were a few things that bugged me about the way that Maggie talked to her parents, the way that she seemed to scream all the time and there were times in the beginning when the story read slow but as soon as it picked up, I forgave everything else. It was an overall, great read.
…and that’s your scoop!
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Book cover and blurb credit: http://barnesandnoble.com
I had so much fun reading this book too-it was just the pick-me-up that I needed at the time!
I know what you mean. I had such a good time reading this book, it was everything that I needed at the time I started it.
It does sound fun.
I’ve heard mixed stuff about it but I guess it could be a bit of a mood book, like if you read it when you’re in the right mood you can enjoy it a lot.
But it sounds like a lot of fun 🙂
Woohoo, so glad you enjoyed this book Wena, because I’m planning to read it 🙂 Yay!