I recently reread all of the Gallagher Girls books, and instead of reviewing them all separately, I decided to make another AWNML post to save time. I never said I wasn't lazy.
(I'm not going to talk about the Heist Society books in this post, since I haven't reread those as recently, but they're good too, so if you're more into thieves than spies, those are worth a shot.)
As you can see, there are six books in the Gallagher Girls series, each of them taking place over about a semester's worth of time. They follow Cammie Morgan from her sophomore to her senior year at the Gallagher Academy, a school that has far more to it than meets the eye. It takes a little while for the overarching connection between the books to kick in, but when it does, everything makes sense.
The first book, I'd Tell You I Love You But Then I'd Have to Kill You, is probably the least obviously related book in this series. It lays a lot of the background, though - Cammie and her friends Liz and Bex are students at the Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women, a school for rich young ladies from important families. At least, that's what the cover is.
It's really a school for spies.
Cammie, Bex, and Liz have been training since seventh grade for futures with some kind of government agency, though they know it's not without risk - after all, Cammie's dad never did come home from his last mission. They're also super excited to finally begin their Covert Operations class, where they learn the ins and outs of actually, properly spying on people. However, they never expect two new people to come into their lives and shake up a lot of what they'd taken for granted.
The first person to arrive is Macey McHenry, a senator's daughter. Normally she'd never be accepted into the Gallagher Academy, but being a descendant of the school's founder has its perks. She's definitely not up to date on the latest surveillance techniques, but she does know how to deal with boys, something the girls didn't know they'd need until Josh Abrams starts flirting with Cammie when she's on assignment in CoveOps.
Josh Abrams, new person number two. A resident of Roseville, the town that hosts the Gallagher Academy, he sees Cammie fishing through the trash as part of her task. Thing is, people don't see Cammie when she doesn't want to be seen - there's a reason she's a spy. She feeds him a lie about her life, and it slowly builds into them forming a relationship.
Cammie likes feeling like a "normal" girl when she's out with Josh, but she ultimately has to choose between him and her school, and we all know how that pans out. Josh becomes a relic of her past and the subject of a mock CoveOps report the girls wrote for practice - they may as well get something out of it, right?
The series changes gears rapidly when book two (Cross My Heart and Hope to Spy) begins. The sort of typical "teenage girl falls in love with the wrong boy" narrative gives way to a tightly woven plot that makes Cammie and her friends uncertain who they can trust. In CMHaHtS, the Gallagher Academy hosts a brother school, the Blackthorne Institute, for a semester. One of the students staying with them is a boy named Zach, who seems to be one step ahead of Cammie no matter what she does. His skills and mannerisms make her and her friends nervous - can they really trust boys from a school they didn't even know existed until they appeared on the doorstep, especially when it looks like their headmaster is trying to make off with a list of alumni from the Gallagher Academy? In the end, they decide to trust Zach, hoping that decision won't screw them over in the future.
To save myself from recapping the entire series, I think I'll cut it off here, with just a basic run-down of what comes next: Macey's father runs for Vice President, and she nearly gets kidnapped on the tour, putting everyone into panic mode - but there were two Gallagher girls on that roof, and after some of the clues come into place, it doesn't look like Macey's the one in danger. Cammie, however, might need to watch her back, especially when the kidnappers decide they don't need her alive after all.
Combine that with Liz's plans for World War Three and Zach's screwed-up family history, and there's suddenly a lot riding on four teenage girls who aren't technically qualified to save the world just yet.
Personal opinion time: I love this series. It's got a great mix of lighthearted humor and serious, well-developed intrigue. It even takes a minor, minor detail from the first book and makes it absolutely crucial to book five, even though book one as a whole doesn't have a whole lot to do with the series overall, as I stated before. They're also relatively short, so it's pretty easy to just whip through the series in a couple of days.
The characters are also incredibly well-written. They all feel like real teenage girls, with all the angst, uncertainty, and confusion about boys that entails. My favorite thing, though, is that they're not Strong Female Characters. They all love getting glammed up for a date or for a dance just as much as they love learning how to incapacitate 300 pound men with two moves. They're tough, but they're not cold, and a lot of their emotional growth involves them learning to trust each other enough to let their guards down and cry. They're also incredibly resourceful, but I think that comes from the spy training. And Macey's family having enough money to buy a small island.
The only complaint I have is relatively tiny, though not invalid by any means, and it's that I wish there were more (read: any) LGBT+ characters. Seriously, a whole school full of girls and not one of them is dating another? A lot of the series is devoted to Cammie and her friends trying to figure out boys, which I understand, but for people who either A) aren't interested in boys or B) just want to get to the spy stuff already, the focus could be off-putting. I can also understand that maybe to sell the novel, Cammie herself would have to be straight (or at least end up with a boy), but there are so many other characters who could have been LGBT without it affecting the plot of the series whatsoever.
Overall, I definitely recommend the Gallagher Girls series for anyone who needs something quick, interesting, and with a solid mixture of action and romance. They're not necessarily world-shattering, but they're good, and the characters are girls just like me - if I could speak fourteen languages, at least.
(Bonus: the relationships aren't creepy or based on that misogynistic "Let me, the man, protect you, the girl, because you're mine" vibe!)
You are totally making me want to give this series another try! I'm going to have to read the second book, aren't I?
ReplyDeletePlease do! I like the first one for its fluffiness, but the real intrigues kick in in the second and third books. And the first book does have its relevance, like I said.
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