The Gal
lagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women looks like any other prep school for elite girls, but looks are deceiving. Though its students are all high schoolers, their school is a CIA training facility, and they are the most gifted of its recruits in training. “Gallagher Girls” have a long pedigree dating from Gillian Gallagher, who killed “the guy who was going to kill Abraham Lincoln—the first guy, that is. The one you never hear about” (3). She used a sword that the school still proudly displays, even if it is booby-trapped.Cameron (Cammie) Morgan, the narrator of this romantic, adventure (sort of) novel, is a normal 15-year-old. “Normal” at Gallagher is a relative term, however. As part of their school curriculum, Gallagher Girls learn and use 14 different languages, study martial arts, engage in covert operations, and know enough chemistry to receive a Ph D. Even though they live in a privileged world, with a five-star chef, secret passageways, and an overall sense of uniqueness, Cammie realizes that Gallagher Girls—herself included—lack knowledge about the one topic most important to a 15-year-old girl: boys. This is a (highly) comic novel where appearances and reality collide. Though the girls learn how to be great spies in school, living in the real world means they must also be girls.
Two events signal that this school year at Gallagher will be different. First, a “hot” new Covert Operations (CoveOps) teacher, Joe Solomon, arrives. He knew Cammie’s father and is one of the few who knows of the exact circumstances of his death. To Cammie, this knowledge reveals her vulnerability and contrasts her ignorance with her desire to know what happened to her father. She never learns the truth, but her questions about his fate serve to make her a more rounded character able to empathize with her mother and her friend, Bex, whose own father misses a “call-in” while on an operation. Solomon, an operative just out of the field, understands what awaits the Gallagher Girls in the real world and tells them to “notice things” after they fail a class exercise. They have been living in a bubble, and he attempts to help them break out of it.
The second event to jolt the complacency of Cammie, Liz and Bex (best friends and roommates) occurs when the campus goes into “Code Red” (unannounced visitor) and the McHenry family visits. Macey McHenry is rich and spoiled and has been expelled from other schools. Gallagher is her last chance. The girls do not see her as Gallagher material, but they are overruled by the headmistress (Cammie’s mother) who has seen her test scores and knows that the McHenry family is related to Gillian Gallagher. Macey is disliked, but she is an expert on boys and fashion. If Joe Solomon introduces the girls to the hard realities of espionage for their future careers, Macey ensures that they get being teenage girls right first.
Appearance and reality also drive the setting and plot development. With its gadgetry and resources, Gallagher is truly “exceptional” to readers, while to the townspeople of Rossville, Virginia, it is just another snooty private school for wealthy girls. (If only they knew!) When Cammie meets Josh during a CoveOps field exercise, she must create a believable “legend” for her identity to hide who she is and where she studies. Their secret meetings in town involve espionage techniques and become part of Cammie’s “surveillance report,” wherein she documents how she and her roommates tail Josh, tap into his computer, sift through his family’s garbage, and break into his house. Is he a honeypot (appearance for her roommates) or a regular guy interested in Cammie (reality)?
The complications of the plot are never that serious, not even in the climactic scene. Carter splashes laugh-out-loud humor onto nearly every page of this enjoyable novel, if not in the action, then at least in Cammie’s view of it. Things turn “serious” only when Cammie thinks about fathers (her own and Bex’s) and when Josh believes he has learned the truth about her after only having heard her legend. (He hasn’t.) Carter captures the voice of a teenage girl, even if she overuses “totally” a bit. Her sarcastic and very teenaged italicized and capitalized mini-commentaries allow Cammie to explain Gallagher’s history, the finer points of being a spy, and her own confusion as she falls deeper and deeper for Josh. Even if “the stakes never seem very high since there are no real villains” (Doyle), Cammie still learns important lessons about love, friendship and truth.
Reference List:
Doyle, Miranda. 2006. Review of I’d Tell You I Love You, but Then I’d Have to Kill You, by Ally Carter. School Library Journal 52(7): 98. Library, Information Science & Technology (LISTA) database, TWU Library. Accessed 3 October 2011.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED (Grade 7 and up)
Review Excerpts:
Though the plot takes a while to unfold, fun details and characters will keep readers engaged. Publishers Weekly, May 15, 2006)
The teen's double life leads to some amusing one-liners, and the invented history of the Gallagher Girls is also entertaining, but the story is short on suspense. (School Library Journal, July 1, 2006)
The characters and their relationships, including Cammie's mother—Headmistress of the Gallagher Academy—propel this story beyond just being an action-packed novel into something special. (Voice of Youth Advocates, October 1, 2006)
Reviews retrieved from Bowker’s Books in Print database, October 3, 2011.
Awards & Recognition:
Black-Eyed Susan Book Award, 2008-2009 (Maryland Association of School Librarians)
Maud Hart Lovelace Book Award, 2009-2010 (Minnesota Youth Reading Awards)
No comments:
Post a Comment