The Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women lives up to its name. Not only does this exclusive boarding school teach advanced language skills and correct deportment; its students also master the arts of tapping phones, hacking into computers, and spying in public places. At school, second-generation Gallagher Girl Cammie Morgan has impeccable credentials: She is fluent in 14 languages and able to kill an assailant in seven different ways. But recently life has dealt Cammie a card that she never anticipated: She has fallen in love with an ordinary boy who knows nothing about her exotic double life. A truly covert romance.

The spy game isn't just a guy game, as witnessed by Carter's diverting entry into the flurry of teen espionage novels flashing loads of girl power. Unfortunately, Raudman sounds like she's straining (and sometimes squeakily so) to sound younger than she is and her intonation is a bit off, giving her reading a falseness that's hard to overcome. Cammie is a sophomore at the Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women a place that lives up to its name, as Cammie knows 14 languages and is a skilled killing machine. Of course, Gallagher girls become the most elite spies, and Cammie fires ahead on that career track (as was her mother, now the school's headmistress) until romance with an ordinary guy, no less threatens to derail her progress. Despite any shortcomings, aficionados of this burgeoning fiction genre will be tempted to give this title a go. Ages 12-up. (May) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.