I'd Tell You I Love You, but Then I'd Have to Kill You (Gallagher Girls Series #1) »

Even though Ally Carter is the author of the popular Gallagher Girls series, she has never told anyone she loved them and then had to kill them. She does, however, frequently cross her heart and hope to spy. You can learn more about Ally and her books by visiting her (declassified) Web site, allycarter.com.

The Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women is a fairly typical all-girls school - that is, it would be if every school taught advanced martial arts in PE and the latest in chemical warfare in science, and students received extra credit for breaking CIA codes in computer class. The Gallagher Academy might claim to be a school for geniuses, but it’s really a school for spies.

Cammie Morgan is a second-generation Gallagher Girl, and by her sophomore year she’s already fluent in fourteen languages and capable of killing a man in seven different ways (one of which involves a piece of uncooked spaghetti). But the one thing the Gallagher Academy hasn’t prepared her for is what to do when she falls for a boy who thinks she’s an ordinary girl.

Sure, she can tap his phone, hack into his computer, and track him through town without his ever being the wiser - but can she have a relationship with a regular boy who can never know the truth about her?

Cammie may be an elite spy-in-training, but in her sophomore year, she’s beginning her most dangerous mission - falling in love.

Publishers Weekly

The spy game isn't just a guy game, as witnessed by Carter's diverting entry into the flurry of teen espionage novels flashing loads of girl power. Unfortunately, Raudman sounds like she's straining (and sometimes squeakily so) to sound younger than she is and her intonation is a bit off, giving her reading a falseness that's hard to overcome. Cammie is a sophomore at the Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women a place that lives up to its name, as Cammie knows 14 languages and is a skilled killing machine. Of course, Gallagher girls become the most elite spies, and Cammie fires ahead on that career track (as was her mother, now the school's headmistress) until romance with an ordinary guy, no less threatens to derail her progress. Despite any shortcomings, aficionados of this burgeoning fiction genre will be tempted to give this title a go. Ages 12-up. (May) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.