The Recruit

Robert Muchamore

Average Rating 9/10 (2 Reviews)

A terrorist doesn’t let strangers in her flat because they might be undercover police or intelligence agents, but her children bring their mates home and they run all over the place.

The terrorist doesn’t know that a kid has bugged every room in her house, cloned the hard drive on her PC, and copied all the numbers in her phone book. The kid works for CHERUB.

CHERUB is not James Bond. There are no master criminals or high-tech gadgets. CHERUB kids live in the real world. They slip under adult radar and get information that sends criminals and terrorists to jail.

For official purposes, these children do not exist.

'Punchy, exciting, glamorous and, what's more, you'll completely wish it was true.'

'A fast-paced action thriller, which should turn into a fantastic series - if James manages to live that long.'

Review by Bethany Clarke (280210) Rating (9/10)
Review by Sam Bailey (040109) Rating (9/10)

Review by Bethany Clarke
Rating 9/10
What happens in the book - The book is about a boy named James Choke. James gets teased at school because his mum is enormous. One day a girl called Samantha Jennings teases James so much he gets up in the middle of class and grabs Samantha he then pushes her against the wall and when she turns around James sees blood dripping down her face. James makes a rushed decision and runs from the school knocking down his teacher in the process. The same night James’s mother dies because she drinks alcohol whilst she is being treated with antibiotics. James is now an orphan as he does not know his Father. James’s little sister Lauren has a father but he is very mean to her. James and Lauren are both taken to a care home. The next morning Lauren is told she is going to live with her father but he does not want James.

James makes a friend called Kyle who goes to the same school as him and they share a room at the care home. Once James has been at the care home for four days he is kidnapped and taken to a secret location. He discovers that he has been taken to a camp called CHERUB where children are taught to be spies and go on missions but to get on James will have to pass a series of tests. Will James get in to CHERUB... read on in the book to find out? What I thought of the book - I thought the book was very time consuming but once you started it you did not want to put it down. I liked all the different characters and their personalities. I also like the fact that it was children who were the spies and not adults and like the Sunday Express quote in every book I did find it punchy, exciting, and glamorous and I completely wished it was true.

About the book - The Recruit is one of 12 (nearly 13) books in the cherub series. The main characters in the book are James Choke (later known as James Adams), Kyle (James’s friend in the care home and a Cherub agent), Kerry (James’s girlfriend at Cherub) and Lauren (James’s little sister).
Bethany Clarke (28th February 2010)

Review by Sam Bailey
Rating 9/10
The Recruit is a great book which was written by Robert Muchamore.

The Recruit is the first of the series of CHERUB Books. It has a main character called James and has a few main/minor characters like Kerry, Lauren and Kyle. I think that it was a fantastic book and I really do recommend it to anyone who can get to a local library.

One of the reasons why I enjoyed it so much was because it is in a lot of detail and the things that are inside the book like what happens and what they do are fantastic in a child's mind! I also enjoyed the realism and I was easily fooled into the fairytale of it being real from the time lines and the information about the Cherub Campus, when you first read it I'm pretty sure you will too!

It’s all about James who goes up for adoption but things change for him when he suddenly wakes up in a campus full of people wearing different coloured t-shirts! When he gets told where he is he can’t believe it! They tell him that he is in a spy campus and they use kids who have no parents and train them as spies. When he goes undercover things go wrong and he nearly dies. Of course I am not going to tell you what happens you will have to find that out for yourselves!

Robert Muchamore is a fantastic Author and you can check out his website at www.muchamore.com. He recently went to Australia and New Zealand and signed a lot of autographs for all of his fans there!
Sam Bailey (4th January 2009)