Spies and Prejudice

by Talia Vance

[Ashley]

Nose Graze — Young Adult book reviews

Spies and Prejudice started out really strong for me. I loved Berry's voice, her name (!!), her whole "spy girl" thing, and her Saint Bernard. The plot was interesting, the best friend character (Mary Chris) was great.. We were rolling! But then my interest dropped off around the 50% mark when we find out that Tanner and Ryan work for some kind of private security firm.. thing.. And that Drew is a corporate spy. Just the idea that all these TEENAGERS are coincidentally working for big corporate companies made me go "Really?"

I also wasn't totally digging the romance in Spies and Prejudice. It didn't exactly dominate the story, but the parts that were there felt strong, except I wasn't feeling it. I didn't feel the chemistry between Berry and Tanner. I could see it trying to be there, but that's all it ever was for me. I never got excited or giggly or any of those feels.

The only thing that really kept me going after a while was solving the big mystery around her mother's death... but even that ended with a flop. So it turns out that Berry's mother never died and she got put into witness protection because they thought there were threats against her.. But Berry's father is the one who wrote the fake threat to try to get his wife to lay low. So couldn't they pull her out of witness protection after they realized that?? I felt like the whole ending was kind of depressing. Berry's mother was alive all along, she never actually needed to be put into witness protection, and now Berry's dad is already moving on with another woman. But we never actually see anything that suggests Berry's mother will be brought back in... are they just going to leave her in witness protection?

I think the characters that made me enjoy the story were Mary Chris and Ryan. Now they were so cute together! They're like two complete nerds who are total soul mates. They completely clicked and had all the chemistry. I honestly would have preferred a book all about those two! Just overall, Mary Chris and Ryan were my favourite characters. Berry was okay, Tanner was meh, Drew was what the hell (still don't know what his deal was).. which left Mary Chris and Ryan rocking the show (even though their parts weren't huge).

Unfortunately this was just one of those books that left me feeling with: What was the point? I didn't feel like anything got resolved in a satisfying way. Combine an unresolved overall plot with a 'meh' romance.. and overall, you get kind of... a big "meh". (Yeah that's really coherent.)

Overall I didn't hate this book. I didn't even really strongly dislike it. I just feel kind of unsatisfied. It wasn't terrible, it wasn't great, but by the end I was certainly ready to move on.

My Rating: