ALA Booklist

Espionage, politics, and high school combine in this fast-paced sequel to The Fixer (2015). Tess is back at her prestigious private school for children of politicians and diplomats. She has agreed to help someone run for student council president, a move that doesn't seem like it would make her the target of a sadistic fellow student. But revenge is just the starting move in this cat-and-mouse thriller. An assassination attempt, kidnapping, and murder threaten not only Tess but also the lives of those she loves. Still-unanswered questions leave plenty of room for the next installment. Recommend to readers of Ally Carter's Spy High books.

Kirkus Reviews (Tue Feb 28 00:00:00 CST 2023)

A girl uses her considerable talent to resolve her friends' problems in her elite high school until she finds herself in an uncontrollable situation in this sequel to The Fixer (2015).Tess learned in the previous book that rather than being high-powered political consultant Ivy's much younger sister, actually she is Ivy's daughter. She's also the granddaughter of William Keyes, notorious D.C. kingmaker. The white teen has inherited the family talent. She can assess a situation and plot a path forward like a master chess player and sees through people well enough to discern their hidden goals—knowledge, her grandfather tells her, that is power. When Tess is reluctantly drafted to help Emelia campaign for student body president, her first challenge is a compromising picture posted on social media. All goes well until Tess finds the perp of that particular dirty trick attacked on the campus of her high school, and the police suspect Asher, Emelia's twin and one of Tess' best friends. But all of that means little when Tess finds herself a captive in the hands of international terrorists. Barnes maps out a plot worthy of soapy political thrillers but focuses on suspense more than politics, especially when the book becomes an action novel in the later chapters. With this installment readers find that this is merely the midpoint of a longer game, with another sequel approaching.Aims to be Scandal for teens and mostly succeeds. (Thriller. 12-18)

Voice of Youth Advocates (Thu Apr 28 00:00:00 CDT 2022)

This sequel to The Fixer (Bloomsbury, 2015/VOYA August 2015) again features the high school politics at the prestigious Hardwicke School intertwined with the Capitol Hill politics of the students' mostly powerful parents. Sixteen-year-old heroine Tess Kendrick Keyes and her friends pursue another twisty thriller, and she harbors a suspicion that a major conspirator from the first book remains at large. Her mother, Ivy Kendrick, famous as a political fixer, deals with a scandal that threatens to bring down the president. A D.C. hospital bombing turns a spotlight on a terrorist pregnant by the president's youngest son. When the terrorists take over Hardwicke and hold the students hostage, they release Tess to negotiate their demands within eight hours: one student will be shot each hour thereafter. The final third of the book brings revelations and betrayals that the whip-smart Tess never saw coming. It also leaves many dead bodies around the school, mostly adults.Barnes is a master at orchestrating clues as well as surprises, and her heroine has a very satisfying knack for flattening both student and adult bullies. Tess's plan to solve the terrorist takeover, apparently hatched off-page between chapters, stretches believability to a breaking point, but the mesmerized reader will not care. The melodrama is movie-ready. At the end, Washington, D.C., is satisfied; the scandal has been wrangled; and Hardwicke returns to its student council elections. Tess, however, has a major friendship issue, new suspicions to accompany her old one, and a clear challenge already lined up for the next book in the series.Katherine Noone.