Book Review: Also Known As by Robin Benway

Happy February everyone! I hope you're all staying warm. To start off this month's book reviews, I have for you Also Known As by Robin Benway!

Being a 16-year-old safecracker and active-duty daughter of international spies has its moments, good and bad. Pros: Seeing the world one crime-solving adventure at a time. Having parents with super cool jobs. Cons: Never staying in one place long enough to have friends or a boyfriend. But for Maggie Silver, the biggest perk of all has been avoiding high school and the accompanying cliques, bad lunches, and frustratingly simple locker combinations.

Then Maggie and her parents are sent to New York for her first solo assignment, and all of that changes. She'll need to attend a private school, avoid the temptation to hack the school's security system, and befriend one aggravatingly cute Jesse Oliver to gain the essential information she needs to crack the case…all while trying not to blow her cover.

What would it be like to be a seasoned safecracker, and prodigy spy, at just sixteen years old? Robin Benway's Also Known As answers us just that. We follow our main character Maggie, Margret, Mags, the girl with twelve different passports and identities, into her very first solo field mission. I thought that Maggie was extremely relatable as a character, even as a spy. She faces the same thing that students everywhere have experienced at least once. Her mission takes her to a new school, with new friends and new trials ahead. She just alsonhas the added bonus of also being a spy and the clock is ticking. I also thought the dynamic between Maggie and her new best friend Roux was hilarious. Roux was the perfect sidekick for this spy story, as the over the top dramatic mean girl type who was just in need of a friend. I thought this book was a cool twist on the typical high school drama that you can pull off of any teen library shelf. I thought AKA was a refreshing read, full of just enough high school romance and high energy chase scenes to satisfy any reader's palate. 

I would suggest this book to any reader who is a fan of teen romance, action, and even just general fiction. Also Known As isn't necessarily in a genre I typically read, but even so it did not disappoint. With that, I'm off to read it's sequel, Going Rogue. It looks to be as promising as the last. Happy reading!

Theresa