I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You

Book: I’d Tell You I Love You, But Then I’d Have to Kill You
Author: Ally Carter
Published: 2006

Cammie Morgan’s got a pretty normal life. She lives with her mom and attends the Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women, and she’s got good friends. Except that she speaks fourteen languages, can kill a man in seven different ways (three of which involve uncooked spaghetti), and the Gallagher Academy is a training school for future superspies. Sooooo . . . normal is a pretty relative term here.

At the start of her sophomore year, on a completely routine mission--um, assignment--for Covert Ops class, Cammie meets Josh. Like most other townies, Josh has never met a Gallagher girl and hasn’t the foggiest notion that they consider Mata Hari an amateur. He thinks she’s a normal teenage girl. She knows from the start that she has to let him go on thinking that. For Cammie, this may be the most dangerous undercover mission she’ll ever undertake. Because national security isn’t the only thing on the line here . . . so is her heart.

This is a lovely bit of fluff, a book to make you smile on a rainy Thursday. It’s kind of like James Bond on estrogen and Cover Girl. Sweet, warm, and very, very funny, Carter’s writing makes you feel for this future superspy who’s as lost as any normal teenage girl when it comes to boys. One of Carter’s real gifts is dropping in off-handed one-liners that are both laugh-out-loud hilarious and highlight how truly strange Cammie’s life is.

With its open-ended epilogue, Carter leaves the door wide open for sequels (the first of which is in the works). Word is, she’s also signed a deal with Disney for a TV movie. Here’s hoping they don’t mess up this great book.