Review: "The Blonde Identity" by Ally Carter

The Blonde Identity by Ally Carter
Published August 2023 via Avon
★★★★

Here's a reading tactic I highly recommend: When you've read a book description and know the book interests you, stick it on your TBR and then...forget the details. Professional clown who discovers she's secretly the daughter of the US president? Remember, vaguely, that there's something about the circus. Growing up gay in Ireland in the 90s? Remember "Ireland". Something to do with spies, written by Ally Carter? Well. Something to do with spies, written by Ally Carter. Don't revisit the description when you start the book—go in blind, and be all the more surprised for it.

The appeal of The Blonde Identity is obvious—I tore through Carter's Gallagher Girls series a decade or so back, and I was keen to see what she'd do with what is in a lot of ways Gallagher Girls for adults. And on that level, this entirely delivers: it's high-paced and energetic, basically a 300-page car chase with some kissing. Our heroine wakes up knowing from context clues that she's in Paris—and, conveniently, remembering a decent amount of pop culture; it's clear from relatively early on that if nothing else she's read more than her fair share of romance novels—but without a clue about who she is or why she's in Paris. She doesn't even know her name, and though I question the way in which that is figured out (very small spoiler: "Ask someone to test a pen and nine times out of ten they'll write their own name," claims the hero (loc. 1215; quotes may not be final), and I call bollocks—I draw squiggles, and I would wager that that's far more common), Carter does a sterling job of balancing what to reveal when.

The book does require a high level of suspension of disbelief. It occurred to me, late in the game, that I should have been counting the number of times the characters should have died—every time bullets fly or someone leaps out of a moving train or falls down a mountain or—well. The list would be long. In real life, these characters would be real dead by now. Since this is a grown-up Ally Carter book, I am entirely on board with this, but it helps that I got exactly what I was hoping for.

Recommended to other young-ish adults who have fond memories of the Gallagher Girls, and to those who don't mind their romance with a high level of improbability.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.