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A review by liralen
Liberty: The Spy Who (Kind Of) Liked Me by Andrea Portes
3.0
Super fun—girl runs off to Russia to be a spy, basically. Bonus points for this being set in the present day and for Paige having a more real-life Russian experience (erm, when she's not being a spy)...she's not a tourist and is uninterested in trying to be one, so we're spared the montage of her going to St. Basil's and other Russian equivalents of the Eiffel Tower and Big Ben and so on.
A tangential Seven Sisters quibble: I go to an all-women's college named Bryn Mawr. It's one of the "Seven Sisters," and the thing everyone always says about it is that Katharine Hepburn went here. The other Seven Sisters are, in no particular order, Wellesley, Mount Holyoke, Vassar (the debutant one), Radcliffe (the Harvard one), Smith (girls in pearls), and Barnard (the one in New York). Bryn Mawr is generally considered the one with the freaks. Also, the most academically challenging. And lesbo central. (32) Nope! Smith is not 'girls in pearls', unless by that you mean, like, pearls-on-their-hands-because-pearls-are-supposed-to-be-the-lesbian-equivalent-of-diamonds. (Smith is lesbo central,* not Bryn Mawr—I mean, outsiders think they're all lesbo central, so it's all relative. But still.) Barnard and Vassar and Radcliffe = the ones that aren't really Seven Sisters anymore, because Barnard is tied to Columbia (if you go to Barnard you get a Columbia diploma), Vassar is coed now, and Radcliffe no longer exists (it's part of Harvard). Wellesley (and damn straight I'm biased, but then, so is Portes) is widely considered the most academically challenging one, as evidenced by its much higher ranking on numerous lists (e.g., US News and World Report: as of July 2017 we had Wellesley, #3; Smith, #12; Vassar, #12; Barnard, #27; Bryn Mawr, #31; and Mount Holyoke, #36). Mount Holyoke is the horse-girl one. Bryn Mawr is the girls-who-make-sacrifices-at-the-full-moon one.
So it's cute that Paige thinks Bryn Mawr is all that, but I digress. Paige goes through her training montage (she gets that instead of the tourist montage) to become a spy, and I am left very curious about her cohort's missions. Paige herself is in some ways very well suited to espionage, as her dissociative disorder makes her quite blasé about minor things like bodily harm. She's also wickedly snarky and reluctant to take orders, which, uh, makes her less well suited to espionage. That also makes the book really fun, though. I love Paige's attitude toward romance—it's not my way of doing things, but it's wonderful to see a YA heroine who isn't all wrapped up in the 'one perfect one', who's not looking for anything serious, etc. A different kind of diversity, kind of. I hope there are more books to come.
*Not a slur. Sometimes I think I should have gone to Smith for just this reason.
A tangential Seven Sisters quibble: I go to an all-women's college named Bryn Mawr. It's one of the "Seven Sisters," and the thing everyone always says about it is that Katharine Hepburn went here. The other Seven Sisters are, in no particular order, Wellesley, Mount Holyoke, Vassar (the debutant one), Radcliffe (the Harvard one), Smith (girls in pearls), and Barnard (the one in New York). Bryn Mawr is generally considered the one with the freaks. Also, the most academically challenging. And lesbo central. (32) Nope! Smith is not 'girls in pearls', unless by that you mean, like, pearls-on-their-hands-because-pearls-are-supposed-to-be-the-lesbian-equivalent-of-diamonds. (Smith is lesbo central,* not Bryn Mawr—I mean, outsiders think they're all lesbo central, so it's all relative. But still.) Barnard and Vassar and Radcliffe = the ones that aren't really Seven Sisters anymore, because Barnard is tied to Columbia (if you go to Barnard you get a Columbia diploma), Vassar is coed now, and Radcliffe no longer exists (it's part of Harvard). Wellesley (and damn straight I'm biased, but then, so is Portes) is widely considered the most academically challenging one, as evidenced by its much higher ranking on numerous lists (e.g., US News and World Report: as of July 2017 we had Wellesley, #3; Smith, #12; Vassar, #12; Barnard, #27; Bryn Mawr, #31; and Mount Holyoke, #36). Mount Holyoke is the horse-girl one. Bryn Mawr is the girls-who-make-sacrifices-at-the-full-moon one.
So it's cute that Paige thinks Bryn Mawr is all that, but I digress. Paige goes through her training montage (she gets that instead of the tourist montage) to become a spy, and I am left very curious about her cohort's missions. Paige herself is in some ways very well suited to espionage, as her dissociative disorder makes her quite blasé about minor things like bodily harm. She's also wickedly snarky and reluctant to take orders, which, uh, makes her less well suited to espionage. That also makes the book really fun, though. I love Paige's attitude toward romance—it's not my way of doing things, but it's wonderful to see a YA heroine who isn't all wrapped up in the 'one perfect one', who's not looking for anything serious, etc. A different kind of diversity, kind of. I hope there are more books to come.
*Not a slur. Sometimes I think I should have gone to Smith for just this reason.