Undercover by Beth Kephart

July 5th, 2008 at 9:04am |

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Audience: Middle School

Rating: B

Synopsis:

Elisa feels so overshadowed by her beautiful sister and mother, that she feels like she lives her live undercover, without being noticed. She always has her eyes open, however, and is very aware of the changes going on around her. Some of these changes she writes up as love notes for the boys at school to share with their crushes. But while she may play matchmaker, she doesn’t have a match for herself … until Theo comes and asks for Elisa’s help with love notes for the beautiful Lila. Suddenly Elisa doesn’t want to write love notes for others and she doesn’t want to be undercover anymore either.

Chatter:

(Spoiler Alerts! ) I liked the poetry in this book and I liked Elisa as a character. I was concerned about her too and wanted her parents to wake up and worry. What kid doesn’t have a single friend (and doesn’t seem to care)? They should have been much more worried about that, because I was. But Elisa’s outcast friendlessness was not my big concern with the book, I had two bigger issues with it:

Elisa did not seem at all like she was a sophomore in high school. She seemed much too immature for that. I found that this book made much more sense if I pretended that Elisa was a middle schooler. (Of course, then her English class curriculum would be too challenging!)
The ending really bothered me. Sometimes I hate an ending so much that I end up disliking the book. In this case I just felt like the book was unfinished. Does Elisa work out her problems with Lila, Theo, school? Do her parents work out their problems? I didn’t feel like there was enough closure.

But I still really enjoyed the book. I wanted there to be more to it. I wanted to know what happens next for Elisa and her family. Especially Elisa. She seemed like she was at such a pivotal moment when things could start to change for her in a positive way. I hope they do.