PDF Also Known As Robin Benway 9780802735454 Books

Product details Age Range 12 and up Grade Level 7 - 9 Series Also Known As Paperback 336 pages Publisher Walker Childrens (November 12, 2013) Language English ISBN-10 0802735452

Also Known As Robin Benway 9780802735454 Books Reviews

• Margaret didn’t have a conventional childhood. When other kids were fighting on the playground in elementary school, she was breaking into safes and cracking locks. Her parents are both spies and they raised her to be the same. Now, Maggie is going on her first solo mission, which is to befriend Jesse Oliver to get information about his dad. The mission gets complicated when her feelings get in the way…
  
  This book was very entertaining. I totally thought Maggie’s safe-cracking ability seemed unreasonable for her age when I was going into the book, but I think Robin Benway did a great job of making it believable. She gave Maggie a good amount of technical knowledge about it that made it feel reasonable.
  
  I really enjoyed all the characters in this book. Roux was probably my favorite character. She’s just enough spunky and vulnerable. She made things fun and she was full of surprises. The only thing I wished about her is that I could’ve gotten a better description of what she looked like. I couldn’t quite picture her. In fact, I really wish all the character descriptions were a bit more detailed.
  
  Maggie was great. I loved how she talked to herself and needed to give herself pep talks. I totally am the same way and I really appreciated that she was like that. I really liked her voice in the book, which is good because the book is fully in her perspective.
  
  My few complaints about the book are the beginning and the ending. The beginning felt a bit too much like she was going to tell us the whole story of her life. It was just too much of filling us in to get up to speed, but it gets into the story fairly quickly, so it wasn’t super bothersome. The ending felt a bit rushed. I really liked the pacing of the book before that point, but all of a sudden it speeds to the end after. I did enjoy the ending, it just seemed to all happen so quickly when the rest of the book didn’t seem to be passed quite as fast.
  
  (Kind of Spoilers!) For some reason during all of this book, I was suspicious of the Collective. I totally thought there would be a twist and the Collective would actually be evil and Maggie and her parents just didn’t know. I mention this because that suspicion was totally wrong. I have no idea why I felt that way, but something in the writing or plot just gave me the impression of it. (End Spoilers.)
  
  Overall, I really liked this book. It kept me really entertained and I definitely will read the next book in the series.
• 4.5 Laugh Out Loud Stars
  
  One thing that can really grab me in a book is the dialogue. If the dialogue is really good I will let some of the plot stuff slide since I’m having such a fun time reading through the characters conversations. I LOVED the hilarious dialogue in this book. Also, I want a teenager to sound like a teenager; I don’t need them to be sophisticated, there should be a general silliness to them as they are discovering language and how to communicate the abundance of new emotions and experiences. This book had that in spades and I giggled out right giggled at so many conversations and instances.
  
  Maggie has lived an exotic life of intrigue and mystery in her sixteen years. Her parents are spies and she is a masterful safe cracker. She has had an unusual upbringing traveling all over the globe righting wrongs and getting the goods on the bad guys. But she has always been in the background, her parents do the intel work and then she comes in at the end to crack the safe and get the proof. That is until now. She had been given her first assignment as the front man and she is totally excited.
  
  Holy crap!” I said. “Hallelujah, it’s a miracle! I finally get to do something besides watch everyone else have fun!” I raised my bagel in the air like an award, then pretended to wipe away tears. “This just means so much to me! I’d like to thank all the little people that I crushed on my way to the top.
  
  Maggie has been home schooled her entire life but the assignment means that she will need to attend High School. I’m not sure that all her time as a spy has prepared her for this.
  
  I have to say that I absolutely adored the characters and their relationships in this. First there is Maggie and her parents. They have always worked as a team and it has really been the three of them against the world. Maggie has been a remarkably easy teenager up until now, probably because she never had a relationship of any kind with anyone her own age, but it seems the game has changed and none of them are sure what to do.
  
  “Look, I’m sorry, but what do you want?” I said. “You signed me up for this, so this is what I have to do. I have to go to Halloween parties and spend time with people! It’s my job!”
  “It’s two thirty in the morning!” my mom cried. “In Manhattan! Do you know all the things that could have happened to you?”
  I looked at my parents like they were speaking Korean. (And to be fair, my dad can speak Korean, so it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility.)
  
  But it is always clear that they are trying and this is just new to all of them.
  
  Maggie finally gets to make a friend her own age. Roux is absolutely positively fantastic and I want a friend just like her. She is a little bit of a mess but in the most fun way. Roux isn’t perfect she is lonely, drinks and had an unfortunate incident last year but I loved her all the more for it.
  
  “Were you a Mean Girl?” I asked. “I saw the movie.”
  Roux paused for a long time before finally saying, “Yes. I was a bitch to people. I talked about girls, made up rumors, all of that. Ever since fifth grade.”
  “So now you’re persona non grata,” I said. “Wow. Social justice, like, never happens. I’m sorry!” I told her when she frowned and started to walk away. “I’m really sorry, it just slipped out.”
  “Yes, please, enjoy my karmic retribution.
  
  Who better to steer Maggie through the social jungle that is high school and also help her with Jesse Oliver her assignment that just happens to be a cute boy, the first cute boy who Maggie has had a non-imaginary conversation with. I loved the cute semi-innocent chemistry between them. They have a very natural playful banter that is perfect for that age.
  
  I yelped and quickly moved to cover my hand. “It’s being resized at the jeweler’s!”
  “I don’t want to make it weird or anything!” he said, even though we were both laughing by now. “I just couldn’t help but notice!”
  “It was sending me into diabetic shock just by wearing it!” I cried. “I didn’t do it for me, I did it for us!”
  
  There is also Angelo who I just adored. He is like your grandfather if your grandfather was a world renowned forger, with great taste in clothes, who draws picture clues for where you are supposed to meet. Maybe he isn’t even old enough to be your grandfather perhaps a super cool uncle or something. He always has Maggie’s back and I loved the time they spent together.
  
  I had soooo much fun with this book. It isn’t all spying and espionage, but I never cared. It was a lot of time trying to get to the information wanted and discovering that it is hard to be a fake friend and have fake emotions when you really like the people you are spending time with and it is easy to get distracted from the mission when the cute boy who is your target is so much fun to spend time with.
  
  “Are you insane?” my mother said to him. “What were you thinking!”
  My dad closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Maggie,” he said, “explain to me again how you have a date.”
  “Um, he asked?” No one said a word. “And I said yes?”
  
  Plus Jesse Oliver was cute and sincere and a little bit dorkie but in the best way possibly. How could she possibly say no? He was like the cutest wounded puppy in the litter.
  
  The only downfall to the entire book was possibly the lack of super spying. She is a wiz safecracker that means she doesn’t chase the bad guys. They have other people to do that. I really appreciate that they didn’t try to make her a self-defense expert or something like that. She is a teenage safe cracker with a few other spy related skills and she sticks to what she is good at.
  
  I recommend this to anyone who wants a super fun, hilarious read that will have you giggling out loud. This is one of the better YA books I’ve read recently perfect for 12-18 age range, or the young at heart.