Summary: A student at a exclusive girls school for spies falls in love with a normal boy.
If I had to guess, the recent article about why adults should be embraassed to be reading Young Adult books is setting its sights exactly on books like I’d Tell You I Love You, But Then I’d Have to Kill You.
I am not at all going to pretend this is great literature. But it was fun, I did pick it up free, I liked the concept and because a young adult friend already has all of them, I will probably read at least one or two more of the series to see how things go.
Cammie Morgan is a student at the Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women. Her mother is the school’s headmaster and like most of the rest of the staff, a former spy. In fact, most of the girl in the school are daughters of spies and/or are preparing to become spies. They practice foreign languages and martial arts and have classes on covert ops and world cultures. This is intented to be Hogwarts if it were a girls school and focused on training spies instead of wizards.
It is also a Disney published book that has been optioned for a movie. And I think it lacked a little bit of the warmth and charm of other similar books Princess Diaries, Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, etc.
Cammie while on a covert ops class exercise meets a local boy. And then she makes sure she continues to meet him, breaking rules and drawing in her friends to help her. But the relationship is built on lies. Cammie (code name chameleon) can’t tell him anything about herself. Having recently lost her father in the line of duty, she knows that families are weak links.
But as you expect, things break down, there is a crisis point and a semi-resolution is achieved. The series is completed with six books so it might be perfect to pick up for some summer reading.
I picked up the audiobook free as part of YA Sync’s summer audiobook promotion. Every week they give away two, thematically related books, one current and one classic. I’d Tell You is free until Wednesday night. If you like YA books with strong female leads, there is no reason to not check it out.
I’d Tell You I Love You, But Then I’d Have to Kill You Purchase Links: Paperback, Kindle Edition, Audible.com Audiobook, Free MP3 Audiobook from YA Audiosync (until June 25)
I picked up this book at the library about a year ago, but I didn’t get very far with it. I found the writing to be a bit blocky and the plot bored me to tears–which is a shame, because I think the concept was quite promising.
In this case I think the audiobook probably helped. It was very well narrated. It is certainly not the best book I have read, it has too many clichés and is a bit too predictable. But I don’t think it is bad, just not among the best YA I have read.