Spy Runner

Spy Runner. Eugene Yelchin. 2019. 352 pages. [Source: Library]

First sentence: Every morning the students of Mr. Vargas’s class pledged allegiance to the flag.

Premise/plot: Jake McCauley narrates Eugene Yelchin’s newest book, a historical middle grade novel set in 1953 in an American town. Jake is still missing his missing-in-action father who didn’t return home from the Second World War. He’s gone but not forgotten. But has his mom started to forget...to move on?! Jake worries that this is so when she takes a boarder in the attic rooms that once were his father’s. Because the boarder—this complete stranger—is Russian, Jake fears that he is a Russian spy. He takes it upon himself to investigate. Can he prove that this man is a spy? If he does, will he survive to tell the tale?

My thoughts: I greatly enjoyed this one? It was very though provoking. I loved how everything was more complex than it at first appeared. I wish he’d trusted his mom a bit more. But what a read this was! I also enjoyed the illustrations—both the endpapers and within the narrative itself.

© 2019 Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews