Jane Blond International Spy by Brianna Schatt
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Jane Blond International Spy is a YA book I received as a free ebook in exchange for an honest review. Jane is a 14-year-old teenager who attends a private school where she seems to find trouble everywhere she looks. She is sassy and quick on her feet. She chooses friends that are not ones that girls that are popular tend to choose. Of course, there are different ways of being popular and it seems that Jane's popularity comes more from her run-ins with two students from Uzbekistan that seem to take pride in bullying those that are less fortunate. Jane's best pals are an Inuit student and a brainy student. In this school most of the students are gifted in different ways. Bruce is very smart with computers. Anouk is a student that spends a great deal of time working multiple jobs to support a family that does not seem to function very well and leaves a teenage girl to go to school full-time and work full-time while they remain at home. Anouk still manages to be successful despite pressures from her home life. Bruce is suffering from family problems as well but has a great support system. Another schoolmate who is the son of a British diplomat is missing and so is his father. Jane becomes very involved much to the dismay of her mother and federal authorities. She strikes out on her own with the help of her friend Bruce. She also has the unwitting help of her gray parrot and Jeff, another student in her class that has Aspergers Syndrome.

Jane has family problems of her own that she is working through, a mom that is dating someone she does not like, a dad that is absent because of his own problems and her own propensity to find trouble in all its fashion. It seems a bit surreal most times how dangerous the trouble is and how she manages to extract herself from some of the situations. But, taking Jane Blond International Spy as an action-packed book where things don't necessarily go her way as a chance to read something a bit different that involves one of my favorite sub-genres, spy/espionage, it was an enjoyable fast-paced read.