Review: The Year of Secret Assignments by Jaclyn Moriarty

Sep 18, 2010 by shanyn

Title: The Year of Secret Assignments (Ashbury/Brookfield #2)
Paperback, 352 pages
Author: Jaclyn Moriarty
Publisher: Scholastic
Publication Date: April 1, 2005
Source: Library

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Book Summary:
Three female students from Ashbury High write to three male students from rival Brookfield High as part of a pen pal program, leading to romance, humiliation, revenge plots, and war between the schools.

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Review:
I didn’t know that this was technically book 2 in the “series,” but turns out that doesn’t matter much. Whew! (I’m not even sure my library had the first one.) Anyways!

The Year of Secret Assignments is a book mostly written in letters back and forth from three girls at one school to three randomly assigned penpals at another (rival) school. Every once in awhile a story would be explained in more detail, but for the most part the letters make up the bulk of the book.

Speaking of bulk of the book – this one was WAY longer than I would have liked. About halfway through I was ready for it to be done – not that I didn’t enjoy what I was reading, but I guess the letter format eventually wore me out. Jaclyn Moriarty is very clever and quirky in the letters – each of the letter writers have a fun personality. While this was fun for awhile, towards the end I started to get a little fidgety. There are a few main conflicts in the book, and I would have liked them to be split into two separate books, just for the sake of the novelty wearing off too quickly.

I almost picked up another book in this series when I was at the library the other day, but decided against it, for now. I did really enjoy the characters and wouldn’t mind reading more about them, but since I didn’t connect deeply enough with this book I didn’t want to ruin my overall impression by reading the next book too quickly. Plus the next book seemed pretty thick, too – I just wasn’t prepared.

When a few of my blog friends found out I was reading The Year of Secret Assignments, they were very excited because they enjoyed it a lot – so there (as always) are a few reviews out there that are contrary to mine. I’m not sure if starting with book 1 helps to develop the characters – if any of you have read them in the correct order you should let me know

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