cover image Spies and Prejudice

Spies and Prejudice

Talia Vance. Egmont USA, $17.99 (304p) ISBN 978-1-60684-260-7

Sixteen-year-old Berry Fields has been on stakeouts with her private investigator father since she was nine, and handling cases since she was 14. The one case she can’t crack is the car crash that killed her mother. When Berry happens upon information that suggests the crash may be linked to her best friend’s father, she starts to investigate, aided—or is it obstructed?—by a couple of handsome guys who’ve recently turned up in school. One seems nice, the other haughty, but both turn out to have ties to the case. Vance (Silver) sets the stakes high: Berry isn’t the only budding spy at work, and nearly every major character’s father comes under suspicion. But while she’s good when it comes to romance—it’s fun to watch Berry and Tanner move from dislike to attraction, à la Elizabeth and Darcy in the novel’s quasi-namesake—the plot feels manufactured and improbable. The big reveal, meanwhile, gives short shrift to Berry’s connection to her lost mother, which until then had been the driving force behind the story. Ages 12–up. Agent: Sarah Davies, Greenhouse Literary Agency. (June)