Carter, Ally. I’d Tell You I Love You, But Then I’d have to kill you. Chicago: Hyperion Books. 2007. ISBN 9781423100041
AWARDS:
Maryland Black-Eyed Susan Book Award Winner
Maud Hart Lovelace Book Award Winner
Amelia Bloomer Book Award
SUMMARY: Cammie Morgan is a second generation Gallagher Girl. She attends the Gallagher School, which is a high school academy for spy training. Her mother is the head master of the academy. Cammie and her friends live at the school located in a Rosewood, Virginia. The town believes that the school is a rich girls’ prep school. The school has prepared her for taking on the world, but nothing about boys. She and her friends are on a mission in Rosewood one day when Cammie meets Josh, a local boy. Cammie and her friends research him and decide to cover for Cammie so she can date Josh. Everything is great, except that the life she is telling Josh is hers, is a total lie. After many close calls, while on a mission at the end of the semester, Josh finds out the truth about Cammie.
At the end of the semester, Cammie doesn’t know if Josh will want anything more to do with her or not, but she realizes that her friends and family will always have her back. Cammie decides that for now that is good enough.
CRITICAL ANALYSIS: This spy adventure is a cute romp through adolescent romance but nothing very adventurous happens. The plot consists of Cammie trying to have this relationship based on lies. The plot has a few spy adventures with the girls, but I didn’t find them that interesting. They are all part of her school work and you know that nothing is really going to happen to her. There was no suspense or real drama. The spy jargon and the way it is written are entertaining. The story is funny and cute, but nothing memorable. I would recommend this book to junior high school girls.
The character of Cammie Morgan is likeable and fun, but no other characters are well developed. Her friends are not developed as characters, so you don’t really bond with them. The character of Josh is probably the most appealing, as Cammie’s “ normal” boyfriend. He is sweet and sympathetic and I hoped their relationship works out for his sake. Her mother is the head mistress of the school, but we never really feel she knows anything about her daughter. The fact that she rooms with other girls at the school instead of her mother, doesn’t allow any relationship to develop between them.
The spy school setting is essential to the plot. The spy school could have been set in any small city to be effective.
REVIEWS:
School Library Journal Review:
“Cammie Morgan, 15, is a student at Gallagher Academy, a top-secret boarding school for girls who are spies-in-training. She studies covert operations, culture and assimilation, and advanced encryption, and has learned to speak 14 languages. Her troubles begin when she falls for Josh, a local boy who has no clue about her real identity. Keeping her training secret forces her to lie to her new love, which leads to comic complications. Subplots include Cammie's relationship with her mother–the headmistress at Gallagher–and her grief over the loss of her father, who died while on a spying assignment. 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. The stakes never seem very high since there are no real villains, and the cutesy dialogue quickly becomes grating. However, the novel has been optioned for a film and will likely attract readers who enjoy lighthearted, frothy tales and squeaky-clean romances. Unfortunately, it lacks the warmth and appeal of other teen books turned into movies, such as Meg Cabot's The Princess Diaries (HarperCollins, 2000) and Ann Brashares's The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (Delacorte, 2001).”
Pulisher’s Weekly Review:
“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.”
RESOURCES:
Ally Carter Website:
Spy Society/Gallagher Girls Website:
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