June 10, 2025 by Feiwel & Friends
E ARC provided by Edelweiss Plus
Beatrice lives at a Pangea Hotel with her father, who works as a chef there while her Momma travels internationally doing dangerous spy work, coming back to the hotel between missions. Beatrice helps clean her mother’s weapons, dye her hair, and even tend her wounds. Momma doesn’t want her to join Pangea, which is an international organization dedicated to world peace, and is hoping to send her to a boarding school for “normals”. Beatrice wants to become a spy, and enjoys the schooling that she gets at the hotel from various members of the organization. Her father is reluctant to send her away because he would miss her. When Chantal’s family arrives, it seems odd that they are not part of Pangea, but are just hiding. Beatrice and Chantal become friends, and do share their “knacks” with each other: Chantal has a knack for working with animals, and Beatrice’s brand new knack seems to be with knives. When Mr. Thorpe, who also has a knack for knives, arrives at the hotel, he asks if Beatrice would like to be his apprentice, but later is revealed to have evil motives. Momma decides that she and Beatrice should visit boarding schools, but are followed by Arctic assassins, which puts some wrinkles into their journey. Will Beatrice be able to stay at the Pangea Hotel with Chantal, or will she end up in an uncomfortable uniform at the Turtleneck Mountain School?
Strengths: Spy school books are always popular with middle grade readers, but some are rather lengthy for the younger part of this age range, so the shorter length (224 pages) is good. Beatrice’s desire to become a spy is understandable, given the environment in which she has been raised, and the warm and supportive atmosphere of the hotel. It also makes sense that Momma would not want her to be subjected to the dangers of life in espionage. The fact that Pangea is dedicated to “world peace” makes it easier to be a spy; I often joke that I could be a spy if I could find a cause I believed in that required such work. This is the beginning of a series, with The Mean Girl Mission set to publish on January 13, 2026.
Weaknesses: While I applaud the shorter length of this book, it would have been helpful to have more explanation on Pangea and “knacks”. There were a lot of elements that didn’t quite make sense, partly due to the lack of world building. This had the feel of a book written by an author who was used to a different age group, and Munda’s previous work seems to be Young Adult fantasy. It can be hard to adjust to a different audience.
What I really think: This might work for elementary school students who aren’t quite ready for longer books like Ponti’s City Spies, and who enjoyed Carter’s The Winterbourne Home for Vengeance and Valor or Primavera’s Ms. Rapscott's Girls.
Better choices for serious, middle school spy books include Landis' Capitol Chase, Bradley's Double Vision, Ponti's Framed, Yee and Santat's The Misfits, Carter's Gallagher Girls books, Gibbs' Spy School adventures, or Horowitz's incomparable Alex Rider series.
This sounds like a good concept but not very well developed. I don't recall there being much in the way of espionage when I was growing up except some of the later Amelia Elizabeth Waldens.
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