Also Known As by Robin Benway

Goodreads
YA Contemporary, Espionage
Also Known As #1
My rating: 4.5 stars

Synopsis

Which is more dangerous: being an international spy... or surviving high school?

Maggie Silver has never minded her unusual life. Cracking safes for the world's premier spy organization and traveling the world with her insanely cool parents definitely beat high school and the accompanying cliques, bad lunches, and frustratingly simple locker combinations. (If it's three digits, why bother locking it at all?)

But when Maggie and her parents are sent to New York City for her first solo assignment, her world is transformed. Suddenly, she's attending a private school with hundreds of "mean girl" wannabes, trying to avoid the temptation to hack the school's elementary security system, and working to befriend the aggravatingly cute son of a potential national security threat... all while trying not to blow her cover.

From the hilarious and poignant author of Audrey, Wait! comes a fast-paced caper that proves that even the world's greatest spies don't have a mission plan for love.

My 2 cents

I really enjoyed reading this book! Totally surprised me! It was a very fun, quick read! Anyone who likes Ally Carter's The Heist Society should really enjoy this one!

So Maggie is a real life spy. She and her parents work for the good guys, an organization called The Collective that takes down the bad guys. Maggie is a born prodigy, and is known as a safecracker. She can break into any lock within minutes. She and her parents work on their cases as a team, and normally she comes in at the very end to "crack open the safe."

But this time is different. After dreaming about it for years, she has her own case to solve in NYC. Her target is a teen boy named Jesse Oliver, a rich "bad" boy type. Maggie soon makes friends with him, and an outcast girl, Roux. She just didn't realize how hard it would be to keep her professional and personal life separate!

I LOVED this story! Maggie was spunky and fun, and I really loved her as an MC. It was hilarous to watch this top-notch spy try to be a normal teen. Drunken parties, detention, failing French pop quizzes--made it so fun to read! Roux was also really spunky and fun, and a total mean girl drama queen. And then there's Jesse, who you couldn't help falling in love with. 

I loved that we got all the contemporary teen drama, complete with parental fights about "curfew", but there was plenty of action, spy work, and mystery. I was totally wrong on who the bad guy was (thankfully!) so I loved the surprise at the end. I can't wait to read the sequel!