Find this review and more at Book Brats! FIND THIS REVIEW NOW!I picked up I’D TELL YOU I LOVE YOU, BUT THEN I’D HAVE TO KILL YOU (damn, that title is a mouthful) on a whim, thanks to the fact it was sandwiched between two baking cookbooks at the Goodwill. I picked it up one morning where I was rudely awakened at 8 AM (on my day off no less) by a cat pouncing on me. I was finished by that evening. This book is just as fluffy as marshmallow cream, but in its humor, action, and surprising plot, it became a very interesting, fast-paced action comedy that I could barely put down.Book one in the Gallagher Girls series follows Cammie, a young spy-in-training at an elite school for the future spy girls of America. We follow her first semester of sophomore year as she attends classes, speaks 14 languages, meets a town boy and subsequently falls in love, and deals with the horribleness of a new roommate. If you like books like Harry Potter – a slice of life in a school so unlike your experiences, plus action and drama – this is a series you should check out.Okay, so I loved Cammie. She is unique, colorful, and her style of narration – a report on her semester in the style of a spy reporting their operation results – was very funny. She has a certain something about her that I would love to see in more YA heroines. Young adult fiction can sometimes be a dumping ground for boring, cardboard-like main characters, but in ITYILYBTIHTKY (still, very long winded, eh?), Cammie breaks the mold and becomes this witty, easily relatable character dealing with her own issues, her own strange experiences, friendships, first love, and lots of kicking butt.Sometimes you just need a fluffy book. I have a feeling that this book would appeal strongly to tweens and younger teens more than older ones – it’s about a 15 year old for one thing. But don’t get me wrong. Girls of all ages will enjoy this. This might be a comedy about a spy school, but at the heart, it’s delicious fluff. It’s rarely serious, even during the climax, which maintains a sense of humor despite the situation. It’s a story about self discovery and choices and friends and love and HUMOR. This is a book where you laugh out loud and break down in peals of laughter because it’s just so funny.I just wish that maybe it had something more compelling to work towards. The climax wasn’t very climactic because the stakes, although there, weren’t too dramatic. The book was well paced and flowed very well, one scene leading into another easily, but the climax could have been a lot more dramatic. It was kind of predictable, as well. And not just the climax, but the entire story. From reading the synopsis, one could probably accurately predict the outcome of the story. It’s a tried and true plot arc that doesn’t reach outside the box.I didn’t expect to enjoy this one. Something about it just felt like it would be a disappointment, but it turns out that I fell in love with Cammie and her story and I cannot wait to pick up book two. In fact, I already put it in my Amazon cart.VERDICT: A light, fluffy adventure about spies and love, I’D TELL YOU… is a cute, quick read, but without much real substance.
