Ally Carter. Cross My Heart and Hope to Spy. New York: Hyperion, 2008. Print.
___. Don’t Judge a Girl by her Cover. New York: Hyperion, 2010. Print.
___. Only the Good Spy Young. New York: Hyperion, 2010. Print.
___. Out of Sight, Out of Time. New York: Hyperion, 2012. Print.

These are four out of the five current books in the Gallagher Girls series. Sorry, if I read the first one it was too long ago to discuss it. According to Amazon, there will be seven in the series altogether.

Cross Harry Potter with James Bond, make her a girl, and this is what you’ve got. It is fun if you like spy stories. There is a lot of self-referential humor here—you can probably tell that even from the titles. But like Harry Potter, and unlike Fleming’s Bond, the stories continue and are best read in order.

Cammie Morgan, our narrator, is a high schooler at the Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Girls. Instead of magicians, this school trains spies. They take courses like Nations of the World and Covert Operations (“CoveOps”). The girls have a crush on their “hot” CoveOps teacher. Cammie lives up to her name and is very good at disappearing in plain sight (Cammie/Camouflage…get it?).

In Don’t Judge a Girl by her Cover, our heroine helps her roommate, whose father is running for Vice-President of the USA, from an abduction. As James Bond fought SMERSH and Harry Potter fought Voldemort, so Cammie finds herself in an ongoing conflict with the shadowy Circle. (Think of THRUSH from the Man from UNCLE TV series).

It is complicated, but it is kind of fun. It is also pretty low on the “chick lit” stuff, so guys would get a kick out of it, too.

There has to be at least one and probably two more books in the series. Cammie in the latest book, Out of Sight, Out of Time, is a senior at the Academy, but she is still in school and there are still a lot of loose ends. Once she graduates from high school, she will probably cease to be a Young Adult attraction and will have to go completely undercover.