MIDDLE GRADE ADVENTURE FICTION: City Spies by James Ponti
ABOUT THE BOOK
Sara Martinez is a hacker. She recently broke into the New York City foster care system to expose her foster parents as cheats and lawbreakers. However, instead of being hailed as a hero, Sara finds herself facing years in a juvenile detention facility and banned from using computers for the same stretch of time. Enter Mother, a British spy who not only gets Sara released from jail but also offers her a chance to make a home for herself within a secret MI6 agency.
Operating out of a base in Scotland, the City Spies are five kids from various parts of the world. When they’re not attending the local boarding school, they’re honing their unique skills, such as sleight of hand, breaking and entering, observation, and explosives. All of these allow them to go places in the world of espionage where adults can’t.
Before she knows what she’s doing, Sarah is heading to Paris for an international youth summit, hacking into a rival school’s computer to prevent them from winning a million euros, dangling thirty feet off the side of a building, and trying to stop a villain…all while navigating the complex dynamics of her new team.
No one said saving the world was easy…
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
REVIEW
As with his other series, City Spies takes the reader on an exciting ride. The story starts with a bang as Sara Martinez sits in a room at the courthouse waiting for her turn in court. She isn't happy when her public defender tells her that her efforts to achieve justice are likely to get her stuck in juvie for years. Things take a sudden turn when a strange man shows up and pretends to be her new lawyer. With some rather amusing (and unlikely) maneuvering in the courtroom, Sara finds herself on her way to a made up juvenile facility (think Matilda by Roald Dahl). The facility turns out to be a house full of young spies disguised as a weather station. Before she knows it Sara, now called Brooklyn, after her home city, is now training to use her hacking skills in a rapidly approaching spy mission. But Brooklyn gets off to a poor start with some of her fellow spies and may be faced with challenges she just isn't ready to face. But the mission's success is dependent on all five young people learning to work together.
I enjoyed reading about Brooklyn and her adjustment to life as a spy. She adjusts surprisingly well, but as a talented hacker, she already had quite a few spy tendencies. Though not entirely believable, the book is highly entertaining and intriguing. The back stories of each of the characters are fascinating as is the way they all come together through the man called Mother. For young readers who enjoy stories of kids doing amazing things and fooling many of the adults around them, this book is a winning option. I look forward to reading the next volume in the series to see what happens to these characters next.
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