Review: I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You (Gallagher Girls #1)

I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You (Gallagher Girls #1)

Author: Ally Carter

Summary:

Cammie Morgan is a student at the Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women, a fairly typical all-girls school-that is, if every school taught advanced martial arts in PE and the latest in chemical warfare in science, and students received extra credit for breaking CIA codes in computer class. The Gallagher Academy might claim to be a school for geniuses but it's really a school for spies. Even though Cammie is fluent in fourteen languages and capable of killing a man in seven different ways, she has no idea what to do when she meets an ordinary boy who thinks she's an ordinary girl. Sure, she can tap his phone, hack into his computer, or track him through town with the skill of a real "pavement artist"-but can she maneuver a relationship with someone who can never know the truth about her?

Cammie Morgan may be an elite spy-in-training, but in her sophomore year, she's on her most dangerous mission-falling in love.




Published 25 April 2006

*

Once upon a time, when I was ten, I picked up Book 2 and 3 of this series. I was left in awe. I searched endlessly for Book 1, but always brushed past it by some chance. 

This year, with the fifth book out, I have with me here, a copy of the first book. 

But, like many childhood memories revisted, this one was sweetly endearing yet too faraway and unreal. 

*

Every girl had their own version of Katy Perry's Teenage Dream.

When I was a kid watching Spy Kids, I dreamed of becoming a spy, learning how to kill someone in 101 ways in classes much less mundane than Algebra.

And, Hallelujah! Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women was my dream come true.

Yet, when I closed the galley today, I was left feeling lost and disappointed. I'd loved the stories of Cammie, Liz, Bex and Macey, yet, this story that started it all was one that did not hit too close to home.

Was Ally Carter trying to be funny? Because, she was not. The jokes were more than dry.

All that I'd loved about the book seemed to have vanished with time. What I once thought was stunning is now purely outlandish. What I once believed to be great characterization is now simply to shallow for me. The girls' friendships had no real substance and I was entertained yet not affected.

And, yes, falling in love.

Josh, the male protagonist, was a great let-down. He's ordinary, too boring to fit into the tale. Cammie's relationship with him was so dull as a result. They talk, they walk, they eat ice-cream. It's sweet! But they can't even pull off a remotely decent and interesting conversation between the two of them. For the first time, I wondered why Cammie might even possibly fall in love in the first place. Though, to give the series some due credit, the love interest changes to another spy in subsequent novels, but let's not talk about it now.

I wish I could tell you the story is awful, but it's not. It's just that there is very little to it. No exciting climaxes, no searing plot, no life-changing dilemmas. You would have expected a dose of that in a novel about spies, wouldn't you?

There has to be something in a book. Because if I emerge out from reading the book same as before, my heart strings not even pulled, then why even read at all?

I never believed in a thousand years that I would say this, but here it is: I wanted so badly to love this book. But I didn't.

I thought it would be a fantastic read, one that would make me swoon, one with a five-starred review.

In the end, it's just a tribute to my younger starry-eyed self.

Source: From Disney-Hyperion (Publisher) for review purposes.

"In honor of the release of Out of Sight, Out of Time (book 5 in the Gallagher Girls series), please enjoy the one that started it all, I'd Tell You I Love You But Then I'd Have to Kill You, book 1 in the Gallagher Girls series."

A Netgalley copy.

xoxo,
Sel