Two Lies and a Spy by Kat Carlton

Two Lies and a Spy by Kat Carlton
Series: Two Lies and a Spy, #1
Source: Bought
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Publication Date: September 3, 2013

Kari plunges into the world of espionage on a mission to save her parents while trying to impress the guy she’s been in love with forever.

When sixteen-year-old Kari’s dad sends her an unexpected text, she and her brother immediately go into hiding. Because when your parents are superspies and your dad declares a Code Black, it can only mean something bad. Very bad.

Kari soon discovers that her parents have been disavowed and declared traitors, and she’s determined to clear their names. Breaking into the Agency seems like a reasonable plan, especially with the help of a team that includes her longtime crush, Luke, as well as her two best friends—an expert hacker with attitude and a master martial artist—and Luke’s popular, vindictive twin sister. Oh, and a new guy, who’s as cute as he is complicated...

As I know you've all guessed by my rating, I didn't really care for this one, and I'm sure you all know that I'm going to tell you why in this review. And really it's simple - I was expecting Two Lies and a Spy to be more like the Gallagher Girls' series, or even Heist Society; but it had none of the qualities that I expect from either of those series, which turned out to be a huge disappointment. You'd think that I would've figured out how to control my expectations, now that I've been doing this for a couple of years, but you'd be wrong.

In an unfortunate twist, I really didn't care for Kari. I couldn't get a feel on her at all. You all know that character depth is very important to me, so it should come as no surprise that I couldn't love the book after meeting Kari. She was just too juvenile for my tastes, and sometimes it just seemed like she was way too dramatic. Everything was made so much more complicated than it was, and I just didn't care for that aspect of the book at all. In normal terms, I'm not so sure that I could have been friends with Kari.

I could, however, have been friends with Evan. I really liked his sense of humor, and his all around jovial personality. He was very persistent, and he never let anything get him down. I liked that about him. The other characters were all kind of unappealing and unmemorable, though.

On the over-dramatization subject, there's also the plot. Not only was it over-the-top, but at many points it was just unbelievable. We were immediately thrown into a world we knew nothing about, and the statistical probability of any of their hare-brained schemes working out are like zilch; so the plotting really was a bust. I couldn't buy the fact that everyone in the 'agency' had children that went to the same school, and that in some weird twist they all kind of knew each other. That is way too far-fetched, in a big school like that.

Not to mention the fact that everything was way too easily resolved - like 'okay you stole it's okay go free'. Real life doesn't work out like that, and not everything ties up in a perfect little bow like that. I didn't like that everything worked out just fine. Plus I just can't get behind Kari's decision making skills, but whatever.

All in all, Two Lies and a Spy was okay, but it's nothing like I expected; and I can't really say that I would recommend it to you guys.