REVIEW: I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have To Kill You by Ally Carter

            Cammie Morgan is a student at the Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women, a fairly typical all-girls-school-that is, if every school taught advanced martial arts in PE and the latest in chemical warfare in science, and students received extra credit for breaking CIA codes in computer class. The Gallagher Academy might claim to be a school for geniuses but it’s really a school for spies. Even though Cammie is fluent in fourteen languages and capable of killing a man in sever different ways, she has no idea what to do when she meets an ordinary boy who thinks she’s an ordinary girl. Sure, she can tap his phone, hack into his computer, or track him through town with the skill of a real “pavement artist”—but can she maneuver a relationship with someone who can never know the truth about her?

            Cammie Morgan may be an elite spy-in-training, but in her sophomore year, she’s on her most dangerous mission—falling in love.

            You know when you read a book and you know that only a total teeny-bopper-hopeless-romantic-uber-girl should like such a book? And then you realize that you’re 23 and apparently fall under that category because of how much you adore said book? Well I’d Tell You I Love You, But Then I’d Have to Kill You is one such book for me. I won’t lie. I’ve kind of avoided the Gallagher Girls series solely because it seemed a little too girly-chick-flick-ish for me and because of my fear that I’d love it despite such reasoning. I read Ally Carter’s Heist Society and then I read her All Fall Down and they were both really good, so I decided to finally give this one a chance. And here I am, giving this book five stars because I absolutely loved everything about it.

            All the details that were overkill for The Name of the Star by Maureen Johnson, were on-point and just enough for this book. No detail was out of place or unnecessary, and that’s what I love about Carter’s work. She’s gives a lot of background detail and lingo like it’s everyday small-talk, but in such a way that there’s no overkill! It was perfect and I fell head over heels for the school, the world, and the characters.

            I wish I could have gotten to know Cammie’s classmates better because of the final exam. These were her sisters in a mission and I wish I’d known them like sisters. The stakes throughout the book could have also been higher, especially since the book is a part of a series. While I loved Cammie’s desires to be a normal girl, I still think there should have been more fear for the consequences. I was never worried that, assuming Cammie got caught, that she’d ever be expelled or given memory-erasing tea. I feared it more for her best friends, but not so much for the headmasters’ daughter. You feel me? There could have been a stronger motive behind Cammie’s desire to be normal of course, and there really could have been some sort of minute plot to carry on through this book and into all the others. These were all nit-picky things though because I though the book was solid. A little bit too stand-alone, but super solid.

XOXO Tia