A review by catholicamanda
The Conspiracy of Us by Maggie Hall

4.0

When I first heard about this book in January, I really wanted to read it. The problem was that I didn’t want to buy it. I wasn’t that sure I would like it. So I waited for my local library to get the audiobook. Then I jumped on the chance to finally find out more about this book.

The main character is Avery West. She is just a normal girl with a single mother, always moving from place to place. Her life is normal, expect for all the moving for her mother’s job, until the night of her prom. Then everything changes. Suddenly she isn’t just normal Avery anymore.

She is Avery West, long lost cousin of the Saxon family, one of the twelve families of the Circle. These families literally rule the world and now, apparently, she is one of them. That is just a bit of a change to make in her life.

Avery ends up in Paris, completely unprepared for what is waiting for her. This is a new life. This is now her life. Until they find out. If they find out, then they will stop at nothing to get to her. But how do you keep a secret when you don’t have all the facts?

Stellan and Jack are supposed to be able to keep her safe. But from what are the keeping her safe? What do the people they work for really want her for? What’s a girl to do when she doesn’t know who to trust or what to believe?

This really is more of a mystery novel. Avery is trying to figure everything out. She is falling for Jack and doesn’t know if she should fight it or go with it. Stellan is different. He is strong, scary, and working for a family that isn’t hers.

Avery grows a lot through this novel. We see her move from the scaredc, normal American teen to someone else. She grows and changes. She takes impulsive chances and then thinks long and hard on other things. She is scared and she is worried and yet she tries to figure everything out.

While I enjoyed this book, I did have a couple of things I wasn’t so sure about. For example, almost everyone in the book is always speaking English. They are in Paris and Istanbul and yet every important conversation that Avery happens to overhear is in English. I don’t think that is exactly how it would happen in real life. It kind of made me skeptical.

Anyway, it was a book I had a hard time pulling myself out of it. I listened to the second half of it on a drive across the state and it did help pass the hours.

This review first appeared at Orandi et Legendi.