Review: Also Known As by Robin Benway

By: unknown on Monday, August 19, 2013

Also Known As by Robin Benway

Published by Bloomsbury Juvenile US

Released: February 26th, 2013

Hardcover, 360 pages

Source: Library  

Reviewed by Angela

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.

(May contain spoilers)

I'm not the biggest fan of spy books. I've tried reading Ally Carter's Gallagher Girls series and her Heist Society series and just wasn't too impressed. Maybe it's her type of writing that wasn't for me because I didn't enjoy it too much. I'm not too sure why I picked up Also Known As, since it's also a spy book but I'm so glad I did.

Maggie has been a spy her whole life, born into a family of them, well her mom and dad. Being a spy means that she cant live a normal life, but shes not complaining. She has a special talent for picking locks and safecracking which is pretty handy when you're a spy, if you know what I mean. Maggie gets her first assignment, where she needs to go undercover at a private school to get close to a boy and make sure his father doesn't release an article about the Collective which is their spy organization.

The one thing I loved about this book was it's humour. So many times it made me laugh out loud. Here are some of my favourite quotes from the book: 

“I raised my bagel in the air like an award, then pretended to wipe away tears. 'This just means so much to me! I’d like to thank all the little people that I crushed on my way to the top.'" 

“But what if I didn’t show up? What if I stayed home and handed out candy or played Angry Birds instead?”

“You like Angry Birds? What’s your score?”

“Stop changing the subject!”

I LOVED the characters, there's barely anything that made me annoyed at them. Roux was probably my favourite. She is so hilarious and even though nobody likes her, because of that "incident" you could tell she still had a kind heart. Such as her "swear jar", where she puts five dollars in for the doorman every time she swears. Maggie was really likeable, too. Because she was homeschooled her entire life, she doesn't really understand high school and the drama in it, which made it kind of funny. Sorry. Plus, her talent for picking locks and doing all those sneaky stuff is pretty darn cool.

If you're a fan of Ally Carter, and also looking for a quick, fun, light, funny, cute read, this is a must. It's basically all of those. After reading this, I wanted to be a spy, too. But unfortunately, I have no noteworthy talents that are very beneficial to spies. Though the plot itself was predictable and not too  extraordinary, the writing, humour completely makes up for it. 

4.5/5 stars