Book Review: Out of Sight, Out of Time

Out of Sight, Out of Time
Author: Ally Carter
Series: Gallagher Girls #5
Genres: Mystery, Contemporary | Young Adult
Release Date: 5th April 2012
Publishers: Orchard Books
No. Pages: 336
Source: Purchased
Rating:
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The last thing Cammie Morgan remembers is leaving the Gallagher Academy to protect her friends and family from the Circle of Cavan - an ancient terrorist organization that has been hunting her for over a year. But when Cammie wakes up in an alpine convent and discovers that months have passed, she must face the fact that her memory is now a black hole. The only traces left of Cammie's summer vacation are the bruises on her body and the dirt under her nails, and all she wants is to go home.

Once she returns to school, however, Cammie realizes that even the Gallagher Academy now holds more questions than answers. Cammie, her friends, and mysterious spy-guy Zach must face their most difficult challenge yet as they travel to the other side of the world, hoping to piece together the clues that Cammie left behind. It's a race against time. The Circle is hot on their trail and willing stop at nothing to prevent Cammie from remembering what she did last summer.

The following review may contain spoilers concerning earlier books in the series.
If you have not read the previous installments, please proceed with caution.

Up until this point in the series, The Gallagher Girls had been a fun, mesmorising and highly enjoyable series with bonds of friendship so strong they could break down walls, connections so strong they could easily put my wifi to shame and an utterly fantastic main charcater who's voice I absolutely adored, but Out of Sight, Out of Time was nothing like it's previous instalments in the series. No this book wasn't a flop and neither did I detest it; Carter took this series, these characters I love and took them down a dark, dangerous and damning path where absolutely everything I thought I knew about this series was turned on it's head and thrown out of the window and holy shomolly did my emotions get churned.

Before I start, I have to both love and hate past Amanda for not having books five and six of this series in her possession after finishing Only the Good Spy Young, because while the week wait between finishing book four and starting book five was absolute and utterly hell, the wait only complimented the style, dynamics and feel of Out of Sight, Out of Time. The synopsis of this book covers the basis of Cammie not remembering anything other than when she left Gallagher Academy, so learning what Cammie's Summer consisted of alongside her, her friends and family throughout this novel was a totally different experience than I'd had in the series. Previously we've known what Cammie was thinking, what she was capable of, what she felt and how she felt it, but this time, everything was different and Cammie's experiences that Summer only highlighted both what a great spy she really is in the field, but also how unprepared the real world actually made these girls and these characters I love with all my heart. It was so distressing from a readers perspective to see such a well loved character who was previously so emotionally strong, so capable and so eager to get answers and solve puzzles fall apart in front of my eyes, hate the person she's become and feel so lost in a place she should know so well. My feelings were all over the place in this book, and I've never felt more related to and attached to a character like I did Cammie in this novel.

However, Cammie wasn't the only character that went through a mountains worth of character development, the other girls, Bex, Liz and Macey, Cammie's Mother and Aunty and even Agent Townsend, Zach and Mr Soloman each had their own tastes of growing and changing and it was so beautiful to see how each of them were affected by Cammie's decisions. Her friends were understandably angry and couldn't understand why Cammie had chosen what she did, while both Zach, Rachel and Abby felt absolutely lost and disconnected to their true selves, even those little snippets of how they felt was heartbreaking because every person, every place and everything I thought was safe wasn't quite so any more. From a plot point of view, it wasn't the quick, action paced and thrilling feeling the other books in the series had when the girls were practicing these techniques because it was all so quickly and suddenly real, but it was more learning the roots of the Circle, more about Gallagher Girls history and much more in depth about Cammie's past and the routes people closest to her took in order to protect others. All of the relationships in this novel were also put on strain while the dynamics changed with Cammie's return, the relationship with her Mother Rachel was so different in comparison to the other novels; they confided in each other, grieved together and finally understood more about the other, even Abby became a better more distinguished part of the family, and while the romance between Cammie and Zach is still something I and the characters are still not completely comfortable with, I do find the connection and feelings between the two to be honest, believable and maybe just that little bit cute. I told you, my feelings and emotions in this book were everywhere, I was bound to find cute, protective, jealous and kissing scenes lovely, I'm a sucker for that sort of stuff..

For me, this book was the sharp, realistic and scary turn this series needed if everyone is to go up against the circle. Of course, there were characters I knew I never trusted from the start and others whom I was pretty darn shocked to her had betrayed my characters, but the fact that this book had so much depth and harshness from Cammie being tortured when she hasn't been trained hugely in that department, the risks that her, her friends and family took in order to not just protect her but to protect thousands of others, and the realistic grief that came later in the novel that made me find this book almost perfect. However, I am now so not ready to finish this series. Carter might be a brilliant author with writing so smooth, flowing and paced beautifully, but even she has the power to make me ball my eyes out and this is the finale people, people get hurt in finales, people make promises they can't keep and some people don't get happy endings. I could not recommend this series more to you all, but trust me, if you read the first book and thoroughly enjoy it, get all of the sequels that follow before continuing otherwise it'll tear you upside down and apart from the inside out.