June review: Spy School

The storyline is really fun. An average 12-year-old boy is selected to go to Spy School, which is pretty cool. And, like all schools, this one has all the great characters you’d expect to meet, bullies and all. But, when his life is suddenly placed in danger, things get crazy and all kinds of drama and adventures unfold.

What I liked: Great story line! The characters are intriguing and realistic, especially the main character, who thinks it’d be really cool to be a spy and get the girl, but finds out pretty fast that it comes with a lot of danger as well. And, anytime you have an ordinary kid thrown into extraordinary situations you have a great plot.

What I did not like: This novel would probably get a much higher rating, but one thing really bothered me about the book…it has curse words. I wouldn’t mind as much if they were used in context of heightened emotion (ie--he gets super mad and a curse word slips out), but they are thrown in so casually that they took me by surprise each time, enough to pull me out of the story, and that’s bad. The author could’ve easily told the story without them. That’s fine for YA, but not for middle grade.

3 out of 5 stars