MMGM- Bridget Wilder: Spy to the Rescue

It's Marvelous Middle Grade Monday at Ramblings of a Wannabe Scribe and What Are You Reading? day at Teach Mentor Texts and Unleashing Readers. It's also Nonfiction Monday.


This series definitely wins my "Unicorns Pooping Rainbows" Award-- and that's a good thing! How sad is it that when I unearth something in my TBR that doesn't involve 18 layers of depressing events that I just want to cry tears of pure joy? This was a fantastic, FUN read. Makes me so happy AND is popular with my students!


Bernstein, Jonathan. Bridget Wilder: Spy to the Rescue
May 31st 2016 by Katherine Tegen Books
ARC provided by Young Adult Books Central

After the events of Bridget Wilder: Spy in Training, we find Bridget back at home, dealing with her brother and his drippy girlfriend, Abby, her annoying cheerleader sister, Natalie, and her overprotective but supportive adoptive parents. Her friend Joanna has moved to New York to stay with family after her guardian is incapacitated. Boring, right? That is, until Bridget is kidnapped by evil cheerleaders and her father, Carter Strike, goes missing! It's back to being a spy, a process which is complicated somewhat when Bridget's parents insist that her brother Ryan and his girlfriend accompany her to New York, where she is ostensibly visiting Joanna, but where she also suspects Carter Strike has been taken. Bridget talks Joanna's family into visiting the Dominion Building, and that's when things start to get exciting. Sam, Joanna's cousin, turns out to be in the business of giving and getting favors, so he manages to get access into an unvisited floor of the building, where they are pursued by a man in a Strike mask and rescued by a woman named Irina. This puts them deep into a mystery involving Bridget's past, international espionage, nano marbles, and the elusive but still attractive Daley Tookey. 

From the first page, when Bridget is kidnapped by the cheerleaders, to the last, where she is discussing a secret organization known as the Forties with her birth parents, Bridget Wilder: Spy to the Rescue is filled with action, good humor, and a good dose of goofiness. There are great gadgets, like the magnetic chewing gum and exploding lip balm, and the fact that Bridget's primary mission turns out to be saving the son of a foreign dignitary adds an air of seriousness that nicely offsets the exploding toilets.

I loved that the characters all went through a lot of interesting changes. Ryan steps up to protect his sister, Joanna becomes kinder and gentler because of her new family situation, the Wilder parents learn to let Bridget have more freedom, and even Abby undergoes an amazing and unexpected change. The fact that Bridget still has a crush on Dale, but can find Sam oddly attractive, is a facet that will speak very strongly to middle grade readers. 

This series has something for everyone in it, but will be especially popular with readers who enjoyed Ally Carter's Gallagher Girls and Beil's Red Blazer Girls series, and will add a dash of humor to the reading lists of those who like Horowitz's Stormbreaker series.