Toning down her take-charge abilities would boost the believability factor. Attention from Zeke unrealistically seems to balance out all the truly bad stuff Sophie experiences. A surprising amount of cruelty, betrayal, and violence takes place, followed by an equally startling quick recovery from all of it. No one’s virginity gets lost in the propulsive novel, but a toe does, through torture. The teen hacks into a senator’s computer, kidnaps an elderly woman, and straps a dagger to her thigh before sneaking into a construction site with Zeke. Espionage training and plain, old badass ability help Sophie as she tries to find her brother and save her mom. The group met in the CIA’s Teen Intelligence Program. Sophie has her own posse: Zeke (who makes her heart “tumble”) and techno whiz kids Jackson and Callie.

Do the terrorists have Erik and Britta as well as their other missing friend, Danforth? The three of them went to a party earlier, according to Erik’s best friend, Max. When Sophie gets a call for help from Erik’s girlfriend, Britta, the first daughter evades her security detail and races to meet the girl at a designated spot. Now, in addition to the credible threat to her mom, no one can locate her older “goofball brother,” Erik. Until today, Sophie’s biggest worry was how her parents would react to her plan to pierce her nose. Her mom believes the action “is coming from someone on the inside.” Even kind-eyed Frank, the Secret Service agent who’s been with Sophie “forever,” can’t be trusted.

It begins in the wee hours when her father wakes her with startling news: A domestic terrorist group has put a hit on her mother, the U.S. In Greenland’s ( Scouts, 2019, etc.) latest YA thriller, Cuban American Sophie Washington will never forget her 17th birthday. A terrorist threat to the president of the United States hits home for a teenager because the chief executive is her mom.

Model Spy by Shannon Greenland