"City Spies" by James Ponti

Yep, it's the first one of these. It provides backstory info on Brooklyn (everyone on this team has a tragic backstory of some sort, otherwise they'd have parents), as well as introducing Charlotte as more of a character than just her cameo in book 3.

Overall, I had the hardest time suspending my disbelief with this one. Its plot isn't any more outlandish than book 3's (which involved a bunch of stolen nuclear warheads), but this one just kind of rubbed me wrong.

I think part of the problem was the characterization of the character "Mother" was rather off compared to the rest of the books. ("Mother" is the man--yes, a man named "Mother", it's an in-universe long story that I've forgotten--who basically acts as the mission control for the team, as well as the adult to accompany the main characters whenever they have to go somewhere that unaccompanied children couldn't realistically go.) He seems to be making it up as he goes along in this one, as opposed to in the other three books where he acts with a lot more forethought. Actually, a bunch of the characterizations were off, most notably with Kat (but that might just be because I like her best).

All in all, I'm glad that this is the first book in the series, because that means the plotting and character portrayals and such get better as the series goes on. Book 5 is out now, as well, which means I'm going to have to get it from the library.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: E10+ for some mentions of child abuse (remember how I mentioned Brooklyn's tragic backstory?) and tense scenes.

Unlike the other three, this book gets 3 stars, for reasons I talked about above.

(Endnote: I've gotten fairly used to the fact that Paris is a guy, but I still can't make myself remember that Kat is short for Kathmandu, not Katherine.)