In a story of Spy vs. Spy we have Pride and Prejudice meets Veronica Mars.

 

Strawberry “Berry” Fields, has been raised by her private detective dad since the death of her mom eight years ago.  Her dad has taught the finer points of spying and getting the proof that she needs for her clients.  But when she spies her best friend’s dad with a letter on her mother’s letter head she has to know what her mother was working on for him and whether or not it got her killed.

 

Berry needs the help of the new boy at school, (HIS NAME), who is kind of a loner since she can’t ask her best friend to spy on her own father.  But why is (HIS NAME) so willing to break into the offices of (COMPANY NAME) with a girl he really just met?

 

Next enter in two new boys Tanner and Ryan who seem to keep appearing everywhere Berry goes with Mary Chris.  What is it they are after and why is Tanner so interested in what Berry is up too?

 

 

Overall this book is a good quick read.  Not the best book out there but with light quick references to Pride and Prejudice and slight reminders to Veronica Mars this is still a completely separate story and great in its own way.  

This poor author has to hate being constantly compared to Veronica Mars, but the home dynamics make it impossible not to make the comparison. The single dad, mystery behind the mom, the snarky teenage daughter PI... Heck, even the dog plays a similar roll, although this time it's a St. Bernard. Don't get me wrong. I LOVE Veronica Mars, and I really enjoyed the story, but the whole time I was picturing Kristen Bell in my head because the differences weren't significant enough for me to develop my own character. Jason just became a white, gay version of Wallace.

 

I'll be honest with you, I hope this turns out to be a series. I read it because of the comparisons and with the exception of the characters snark being a little weak, I had fun. There's been a marshmallow size hole in whole in my heart for years and it helped fill that in just a little bit.

3.5 This poor author has to hate being constantly compared to Veronica Mars, but the home dynamics make it impossible not to make the comparison. The single dad, mystery behind the mom death, the snarky teenage daughter PI... Heck, even the dog plays a similar roll, although this time it's a St. Bernard. Don't get me wrong. I LOVE Veronica Mars, and I really enjoyed the story, but the whole time I was picturing Kristen Bell in my head because the differences weren't significant enough for me to develop my own character. Jason just became a white, gay version of Wallace.
I'll be honest with you, I hope this turns out to be a series. I read it because of the comparisons and with the exception of the characters snark being a little weak, I had fun. There's been a marshmallow size hole in whole in my heart for years and it helped fill that in just a little bit.

It's no secret that I love Pride and Prejudice. I read the book, watched both the BBC mini-series and the movie that stars Keira Knightly. So when I saw this book on Goodreads I was immediately drawn to it, despite its somewhat cheesy title.

Berry is a teenage private investigator and she works for her Dad's PI firm. Veronica Mars anyone? I'm not sure if this is what the author is aiming for but if it is, she was successful in that endeavor. In my head, I thought of the lovely Kristen Bell, my favorite teenage detective, when Berry was described.

 

A Pride and Prejudice/Veronica Mars mashup. Strawberry Fields has assisted her father's private investigations almost since she was eight, when her mother died in what is generally believed to be a suicide. Berry finds evidence that her best friend's father may have been involved, at the same time as she's dealing with the new hot jerk in town, who seems improbably interested in her despite being blown off rudely at every opportunity.

The charm of the conceit kept me involved for the first few chapters, but the impausibility of the spy and corporate espionage hijinks, the Inspector Gadget technology, and the shallowness of the characterization wore on me. By the end, Berry's angst over her hard-heartedness, inability to love, and betrayal by others was completely overblown -- as opposed to her angst over her mother's death and her need to find out what happened, which the book takes seriously but which her friends seem strangely underimpressed with. I was also disturbed by how little Berry's father and friends cared about her persistent sexual harassment by a minor character; her father forces her to spend to time with the kid because he's dating the kid's mother, one of Berry's friends keeps excusing the guy as "confused" and ends up dating him.

The emotional direction of the ending doesn't make a huge amount of sense, but it's probably setting up a sequel. I won't be reading it.