ARC Review: I, Spy by L. M. Kemp

I, Spy
Author: L. M. Kemp
Publication: Minotaur Books (May 5, 2026)

Description: Ex-spy Kendal was one of the best, but now she’s wearing the toughest disguise of her career: Mom.

“An incisive feminist thriller and heaps of fun.”―Margot Douaihy

Kendal Carter is out in the cold and she wouldn’t have it any other way. It’s been four years since her daughter Rosie was born and Kendal has kept her miles away from the danger of her former life as a spy. But when their hiding place is discovered, Kendal is forced to turn to old contacts for help. Her longtime friend and ex-handler Rico doesn’t miss his chance to pull his best spy back in. Whisking them to London, Rico offers them a luxury safe house in an area with good schools. How can Kendal resist?

But there’s a catch, of course. Rico wants Kendal to come back to work for his espionage agency Bon Temps. He’s offering an assignment with no apparent downside, investigating one of the dads at Rosie’s new school who works at one of London’s biggest, murkiest tech firms and suspected of being up to no good. It should be easy enough for someone with her experience, and luckily, mother is the perfect cover.

However, it doesn’t take long for Kendal to realize that Rico’s got an agenda of his own. The tech firm may be dealing in darker and more deadly secrets than they all realize, plus the world of coffee mornings and playdates comes with its own web of allegiances and betrayals. Kendal soon finds herself in way too deep . . .

A gripping blend of suspenseful spy thriller with heartfelt women’s fiction, I, Spy is the first in a propulsive debut series about the masks we all wear, whether as a spy or as a parent.

My Thoughts: Kendal Carter is laying low after delivering her daughter Rosie. She hopes that her life as a spy is long behind her. But that old life catches up to her forcing her to call on old allies for aid. 

Kendal finds herself in London in a luxury safe house and enrolling Rosie, now four, in a good school. She's supposed to be training a guy to go undercover at a tech firm suspected of wrongdoing. But Kendal should know better than to trust her old colleague. 

Kendal soon finds herself deep in a web of spies with conflicting agendas and the local mom's group at her daughter's school which is also filled with conflicting agendas. Kendal needs to dust off her old skills in a hurry if she and Rosie are to survive. 

And Rosie has reached the age when she's starting to ask about her father. He's the only man that Kendal ever fell in love with and it turns out he was a spy too. His supposed death turns out not to be as final as Kendal had supposed. 

This was an interesting story filled with people with hidden lives and agendas. It started slowly for me but persistence drew me into the story which ended up being quite satisfying. 

I received this one in exchange for an honest review from NetGalley. You can buy your copy here.