Thursday 20 September 2012

Cross My Heart And Hope To Spy review

Cross My Heart And Hope To Spy
Ally Carter
October 2nd 2007
Orchard Books

Cammie Morgan is back, and it's clear that her life hasn't calmed down since the events of I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You. At first, giddy anticipation is in the air. Gallagher Academy, Cammie's elite spy school, is hosting a visit from a covert training center for boys. Soon after the boys' arrival, though, everything goes dangerously awry when a series of security breaches are discovered at the academy. Worse yet, teenage agent-in-training Cammie is being blamed for the penetration. With the school's top-secret status at risk, the Gallagher Girls have to work quickly to save their beloved school.

Cross My Heart and Hope To Spy was everything I wanted from the second book in the Gallagher Girls series and more. It was fun, exciting and started to hint at the darker tone I think these books will start to have. Also, there's a new interest and I WOULD LIKE TO SEE MORE OF HIM PLEASE ALLY THAT WOULD BE GOOD.

Sorry, I'm just freaking out about Zach because after boring Josh who had all the personality of a soggy biscuit, Zach was kind of awesome. It still didn't feel like there was much different about him than a lot of YA love interests, but let's face it, they're all a bit samey these days anyway. I quite like the saminess, really, because I'd rather have bog-standard Snarky-Hot-Funny-Nice-Guy than, say, a murderer or something. And I still love them, regardless, so it's all good. Besides, Zach definitely has some mystery to him, what with the whole Blackthorne thing! What the hell are they? There better be a good explanation, because if it turns out that they're just the same as the Gallagher academy (which is said to have the best curriculum in the world) and they're better at being spies than the girls, then I will be really pissed off. There were a lot of times that I really just wanted Cammie to dropkick him or something to stop him from being such a douche all the time. Damn you, sexual tension! (I'm just kidding. You youngun's have as much sexual tension as you want.) 

Now I feel like we're really starting to get into the thick of the story. I think that they're all kind of standalone-ish, but with an overarching plot, so it's good to see that get started. After reading this, the first book felt a bit like a Pilot. Nothing happened in it to affect the rest of the books that much, apart from the stuff with Josh. This book felt like it had a lot more actual Spy action in it, which was really great because I like the spy parts a lot. I know I said this already, but it made me kind of sad that the first book was all about Cammie not really wanting to be a spy. I feel like we're either going to see her really start to embrace the spy lifestyle, or really start to hate it. Though I am SO freaking glad that the new guy is also a spy so we can get that whole gimmick of Pretending-Not-To-Be-Spy thing out of the way. If Josh had been the LI for the whole series, I don't think I'd be half as interested in it.

I'm really starting to like Cammie a lot now, as I feel we're starting to get to see more of her as a character. She's starting to become a lot more three dimensional than the person we saw in the first book.(Not that she wasn't realistic or anything, it's just that we really only saw glimpses of the serious Cammie). There was still a lot of humour, though, which I enjoyed even if sometimes it either fell a bit flat or felt a bit forced. There were times around Zach that I thought Cammie acted rather stupidly for a girl who goes to a school for Spy Geniuses, but that was really my only problem with Cammie in this book.

I'm still annoyed that there hasn't really been any real threat yet. In both these books, the big finale scene has always been a test, and we're never really that worried for the characters, and there isn't a bad guy. I need a bad guy! I need an evil group of spies who are evil and do evil things and make everyone's life hell, and I don't care if it's lame or stereotyped, I just need an actual threat and fast. And after peeking through some of the next 3 books (what?! I had to check if Zach was still around...) and I think there definitely will be some really bad stuff happening to Cammie and her friends in the next few books.

Cross My Heart and Hope To Spy is a really great second book, that feels like we're really starting to get into the series now, and I don't think it'll be long until I start reading the next 3. And the Heist Society books. What can I say? I'm hooked.

1 comment:

  1. This is such an awesome review, you pretty much said everything I thought about it as well!! But as Liz kept saying to me when I read them "just wait, they get so much better" and they really really do! I think you're gonna love the rest of the series. Totally agree about Zach, SO much better than Josh!

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