Cameron Morgan is a boarder at the Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women. This is supposed to be a school for girls with genius-level brains, but in fact it is a school for spies. Most of the staff are retired spies including Cameron's mother, the headmistress, who is a former CIA agent. One of the things I enjoyed about this book was the way the author sneaks in little asides about things the teachers had done in their previous missions. For example, Cameron says this about Professor Buckingham, a semi retired teacher, 'she sounded less like the soft, elderly teacher we knew and more like the woman who had single-handedly taken out a Nazi machine gun post on D-Day.'
Cameron is known to her friends, Liz and Bex, as Cammie the Chameleon because she is very skilled at hiding in plain sight. Liz is meant to be one of the smartest girls on the planet, and Bex is the only British girl in the school (her Dad is a British spy); she is especially skilled in fighting. They have to work as a team on a Covert Ops training mission, where they have to tail a teacher through the local town without being seen. The teacher they are trailing was once one of the world's most elusive spies so the mission is not an easy one. Cammie manages to complete the mission successfully, however she is noticed by a boy called Josh. This is extremely unusual for someone who has gone through the first fifteen years of her life unnoticed… and this is the start of a great adventure.
I thought this book was really entertaining and I was hooked from the first page. Cammie is a likeable character and the situations that she gets into with her friends are exciting to read. There is also some mystery in the story because you suspect that a new teacher called Mr Solomon might know some information about the death of Cammie's father during a CIA mission. All the teachers have interesting histories which makes the Gallagher Academy seem like a cool place to study. The writing style reminded me of The Princess Diaries and Nancy Drew and the story is like a more grown up version of Ruby Redfort. There are six books in this series and I am keen to read them all. I would imagine that if you enjoy stories about smart, funny, brave girls who enjoy adventures as well as more girly things you will want to read this book.
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