Being a 16-year-old safecracker and active-duty daughter of international spies has its moments, good and bad. Pros: Seeing the world one crime-solving adventure at a time. Having parents with super cool jobs. Cons: Never staying in one place long enough to have friends or a boyfriend. But for Maggie Silver, the biggest perk of all has been avoiding high school and the accompanying cliques, bad lunches, and frustratingly simple locker combinations.
Then Maggie and her parents are sent to New York for her first solo assignment, and all of that changes. She'll need to attend a private school, avoid the temptation to hack the school's security system, and befriend one aggravatingly cute Jesse Oliver to gain the essential information she needs to crack the case . . . all while trying not to blow her cover.
I'm sure it's no secret that I'm a huge fan of thrillers, especially those involving teen spies (hence my obsession with the Gallagher Girl series by Ally Carter). So I was super excited to find out that Robin Benway was writing one of those books! To my delight, Also Known As was just as awesome as I thought it would be. I loved Maggie's voice and quick wit; that combined with her crash course in attending a real high school and the high stakes of living the life of a spy made for a wonderfully engaging and exciting read.
Rating: 4.5
Review copy from personal collection
Lexi’s always been the funny one, the girl with the great personality. Everybody loves to hang out with her because they can always count on her to make them laugh. And while that’s all fine and well, lately Lexi has been getting tired of being shoved into that category. She wants guys to see her as girlfriend material, not just as a friend who’s a girl. But how can she get everyone to start thinking about her differently? With a little help from her friends and some inspiration from the beauty pageant scene her seven-year-old sister Mackenzie frequents, Lexi hatches a plan: with a little makeup and some hair product, Lexi’s going to be the new beauty queen at school. But things don’t quite turn out as planned, and Lexi will have to figure out, under her new exterior, who she really wants to be. 
Madeleine and her mother have run away from their old life—well, Madeleine ran away, her mother followed, and they just never went back. Now they’re living in Cambridge and Madeleine’s doing her best to adjust to things and not miss everything she used to have. Meanwhile, in the town of Bonfire in the Kingdom of Cello, Elliot is in search of his father. The whole town thinks that his dad killed his brother and ran away with the Physics teacher, but Elliot is sure this can’t be what really happened and is determined to figure out the truth. As Madeleine and Elliot go about their lives, a crack—the first in centuries—opens between their worlds, and the two begin a very strange correspondence. At first, it’s the companionship and their sometimes silly exchanges that spur them to unravel their own mysteries, but soon it becomes clear that there are greater things at stake: color storms, old forgotten friends, the Butterfly child, the lives of their loved ones, and a set of perplexingly missing persons.
The year is 1950, and Josie Moraine is tired of living in New Orleans. She’s tired of the way people look at her because of what her mother does for a living, and she wants more than what the Big Easy has to offer her. She has dreams of attending college in New England, but every day those dreams seem more unreachable, especially when there’s a mysterious death in the French Quarter. Josie isn’t so sure why she’s so curious, but she wants to—no, has to—know more about this dead man. But what she learns will only further unbalance her already unsteady world, challenging her allegiance to her mother and the only other people Josie can reasonably call family. 
For as long as she’s remembered, Anna has led a life full of secrets: both her own and those of others. In a secret lab in the basement of their home, Anna’s father runs experiments on four genetically altered boys, and Anna has been sneaking in to visit them long before she was allowed to even enter the lab. But now that she’s helping her dad out there, Anna has gotten to know the boys a lot better: moody Nick, teasing Cas, thoughtful Trev, and especially enigmatic Sam. She’s come to care a lot for them, which is why she’s so upset when she learns that the Branch, the mysterious organization that her dad works for, is coming to retrieve their property. But when the Branch does show up, things go drastically wrong: people are killed and the boys escape, taking Anna with them at her father’s request. But they can’t run forever, because what they need more than safety is answers. What happened before the boys were brought to the lab? And how is Anna really connected to them?
Jade Moon is a Fire Horse and much too stubborn, strong-willed, and inquisitive for a girl in a Chinese family. All she wants is to be allowed to be herself, but as long as she remains in her small town in China, she has a duty to marry, even if it seems increasingly unlikely that anyone will want to take her. But then a young, smooth-talking man named Sterling Promise shows up with an opportunity, and soon, Jade Moon finds herself traveling with Sterling Promise and her father to America. This is the chance that Jade Moon has been waiting for, it seems, and she plans to make the most of it. But, as she finds out the hard way, America in 1923 is hardly receptive to Chinese immigrants and that Chinese women in particular are only ever brought to America for two reasons—marriage or prostitution. But Jade Moon isn’t about to give up her only chance at freedom without a fight, and if anyone can make their way in America, it’s a Fire Horse.
Blue Sargent is the only normal person in a family full of psychics, but that doesn’t mean that she leads an ordinary life. Ever since she was little, she’s been warned that if she kisses her true love, he will die. Blue never thought this would be a problem, having resolved that she would never fall in love, but everything changes when she meets Gansey, or, more accurately, his spirit. Gansey, a wealthy student attending Aglionby, is to die within the year. Going against all she knows, Blue finds herself getting involved with Gansey and his friends from Aglionby, people she’s always despised as Raven Boys, and their crazy quest to find something that most people don’t believe exists. Only, as it turns out, what they seek is very real—and they’re not the only ones who will do anything to find it.
Ruby remembers the first time she saw someone die—it was right in front of her in elementary school. That’s back when the disease was still new and no one knew how to deal with it, especially the children who didn’t die, especially the children who started exhibiting strange…abilities. When Ruby wakes up on her tenth birthday, there’s something different about her, something so terrifying that she immediately gets sent to Thurmond, a government “rehabilitation” camp, meant to fix her and the other hundreds upon thousands of kids like her. But there is no cure but death for the dangerous ones, and six years later, when she finds out that’s the category into which she falls, she barely makes it out of Thurmond alive. On the run from too many enemies and desperate for answers, Ruby joins up with another group of runaways. She’s reluctant to completely trust them with her secrets, because if they knew who she was and what she was really capable of, they might not see her the same way. Torn between a life of danger but the first chance at freedom she’s ever had and her fear of hurting her new friends, especially Liam, Ruby will have to decide whether she’ll let herself be used as a weapon or if she can take control of her power for good.
Allyson Healey has always been the good girl, which is why she’s not exactly sure why she’s ditching the rest of her tour group to see an underground performance of Twelfth Night in England. But when she sees him again—Willem—she knows he’s the reason. There’s something about him that makes her want to stop being good, rule-following Allyson and become the wilder world traveler Lulu. So, against all her inhibitions, she goes off with him to Paris for a day that she will never forget. And it’s a truly amazing day, but when Allyson wakes up the next morning to find Willem gone, all that’s left is the memory of it, horribly and irrevocably burned into her mind. Over the next year, as Allyson struggles to come to terms with that day and her connection with Willem, she starts to realize that she is simply not living the life that she wants. She’s barely making it through college classes that she has no interest in taking, and she’s having a hard time connecting with her roommates. She’s starting to wish that she were Lulu again, but Lulu was only a dream that existed for a day, it seems, a terrible, beautiful day that ended too long ago. But in order to understand who she is, Allyson realizes that she first needs some answers, from herself and from Willem. 
Wren Wells is in hiding. After everything that happened, after her boyfriend died in a car crash while she survived, Wren has shied away from the vestiges of her old life. Her mom may still call her Mamie, but she isn’t really Mamie anymore. She’s just Wren, a quiet girl hiding out in a small town in Maine, trying to piece her life back together. When she meets Cal Owen, though, there’s something about him that forces a connection between the two. He’s also in hiding and, like Wren, has a few secrets of his own. But even as Wren begins to hope, that she might be able to have a normal relationship with someone despite her past, she continues to doubt herself—she’s afraid that if she stays with Cal, she’ll just end up hurting him, like she’s hurt everyone else. But, as she comes to realize, she can’t protect herself or Cal from everything and that to live again, she’ll have to open up her heart, to the hurt, but also to the hope.
Darcy Jones doesn’t remember anything before she was five, when she was abandoned outside a firehouse in Chicago. She’s never really belonged anywhere, but for now, she’s at least content to start the school year with friends. But then Conn shows up, and there’s something about him that makes her feel and want things she never allowed herself to feel and want before—until she finds out that Conn isn’t who she thinks he is. He’s not even from this world—and it turns out that neither is she. As Darcy navigates a new world where the Great Chicago Fire never happened and she is hated on impulse for who she is, a Shade, she struggles to piece together a past she now desperately needs to know. Confronted with the darkness of the past and the danger of her present, Darcy knows that for once she can’t just run away—she has to face her demons if she wants to save herself and those she’s come to care for.
