Going Rogue by Robin Benway (review)
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- Going Rogue by Robin Benway
Maggie (from Also Known As, BCCB 9/13) has been reveling in the first normal year of her life—complete with a best friend, Roux, and a most excellent boyfriend, Jesse—after completing an important assignment with the Collective, a private covert organization dedicated to fighting corruption throughout the world. Now, however, the Collective itself is rotting from corruption, with Maggie’s parents and other agents being framed by insiders for thefts they didn’t commit. Need we explain that it’s up to Maggie to run a solo mission this time around to defend her parents’ reputations and save the lives of family and friends? The spy-caper plotting [End Page 256] is a bit thinner than that of Benway’s series debut, but what it lacks in intricacy it makes up for in strengthened relationships among and characterizations of Maggie, Roux, and Jesse. Maggie continues to be a self-deprecatingly funny heroine, and her two besties rise well beyond their status as sidekicks to strong, loving friends with plausible episodes of balking at involvement with Maggie’s perilous life. Teens who appreciate the old school romantic capers in the tradition of Charade and the Pink Panther movies will happily nuke a bag of microwave popcorn and settle in for an entertaining, kissing-intensive romp.
