Dear reader, I, Spy by L. M. Kemp will always have a special place in my heart but I will never know the ending. Today I am sharing why I decided to close this book. Read on if you would like to know.
Synopsis of the Book:
Ex-spy Kendal was one of the best, but now she’s wearing the toughest disguise of her career: Mom.
Kendal Carter is out in the cold and she wouldn’t have it any other way. It’s been four years since her daughter Rosie was born and Kendal has kept her miles away from The Game. But when their hiding place is discovered and danger comes too close, Ken is forced to turn to old contacts. Her longtime friend and ex-handler Rico doesn’t miss his chance to pull his best player back in. Whisking them to London, Rico offers them a luxury safe house in an area with good schools. How can she resist?
But there’s a catch, of course. Rico wants Kendal to come back to work for his espionage agency Bon Temps. He’s offering a cushy assignment with no apparent downside, running a rookie asset in one of London’s biggest, murkiest tech firms. It should be easy enough for someone with her experience, and luckily, mother is the perfect cover.
However, it doesn’t take long for Kendal to realize that Rico’s got an agenda of his own. The tech firm has hands in Rosie’s school, and the world of PTAs and playdates comes with its own web of allegiances and betrayals. Kendal soon finds herself in way too deep . . .
I, Spy is a propulsive debut thriller about the disguise that all parents wear, and the former lives that come back to haunt us.
My thoughts on I, Spy
I remember the moment I opened book mail and found a review copy of I, Spy. I instantly loved L. M. Kemp’s note to the reader:
“Becoming a mother was such a huge shift in identity that it blows my mind even years later. I changed in ways I had never been warned about. The body changes, sure, but more bizarrely, my ideas changed, my fears changed.”
L. M. Kemp
As she shared about why she embarked on this book project, I felt a kinship with her. I was excited—not just to read the story, but to eventually connect with her in conversation.
In I, Spy, the protagonist, Kendal, has been away from espionage for four years and is now returning to the scene with a four-year-old in tow. Kendal is blown away by how much things had advanced in her line of work – the technology, the office spaces, the scale of operations. The stakes had always been high, but now they feel different. She has Rosie to keep safe. I thought about my own return to the office after a year of maternity leave and the dilemmas and changes I was confronted with.
One late March weekend afternoon, as my daughter napped, I logged into my work computer to track down a recipe I had searched for earlier. It made me feel, briefly, like a spy. I decided it was time to read this book!
For her first mission, the set up seems easy. Kendal is tasked with training a rookie asset to infiltrate a tech company, all while maintaining the rhythms of her everyday life. I liked Kendal. She is observant, always assessing, always reading between the lines. Her sixth sense is spot on. As glimpses of her childhood emerged, she solidified as a character for me.
A bounty on Kendal’s head pulls her back into this world, this time with Rosie alongside her, but the urgency of it never quite made sense for me. The chapters are short, which gives the impression of momentum, but I realized over time that each time I stepped away, I found it hard to return.
There are many characters in this book and I could not completely place them. Maybe because this is an espionage mission where Kendal isn’t authentically making connections – they are more to support her work than for real – I couldn’t really buy into caring about anyone. Even the few people who were part of her life before she had Rosie had drifted away from her and while she could fall back into those relationships, I didn’t know them enough.
About halfway through the book, I happened to step away for a little longer than before. I found myself wondering if I even wanted to come back. I tried half an hour of readings, jotted down some notes and tried to convince myself that I was interested.
I was drawn to the reflections on motherhood as some of them mirrored my own experiences. In one chapter, Rosie develops an awful cough which Joel diagnoses quickly as croup. I clearly remember when my daughter had croup. It was an intense time. In the book, this moment felt surprisingly light. Of course, not every parenting experience will resonate in the same way but this disconnect stayed with me.
This is when the gradual resistance eventually became a moment of knowing.
I am 160 pages in and putting this book down.
There is still something here that I appreciate. I love the concept! I have many fond memories associated with this book—the anticipation, the note from the author, the connection I felt at the beginning.
Just not the story itself.
On the upside, I still got to host the author for an interview − you can read my conversation with L. M. Kemp here. This book may not have been for me but it gave me one of my favorite conversations with authors. 🙂
I am no longer reading to completion when I am not drawn to the story. I leave this story here.
This post is part of When I Close the Book series where I write about the stories that I spent some time with but eventually decided not to read further, maybe for now, maybe forever. Thanks for reading!
Many thanks to the publisher for a review copy of the book for my honest thoughts. I am forever grateful for the books that meet me in my mailbox.
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