A spy. An assassin. A telepath. Just your average family.

In Endo’s world, Ostania and Westalis are on the constant verge of civil war and after the last civil war, the government’s SS and the WISE agency do their best to route out dissenters and other individuals that threaten fragile peace.

Twilight is the best spy in WISE and master of disguise, but his latest mission threatens to test the best of his skills. Top government official, Donovan Desmond is a linchpin to the civil war grenade, he has to get close but the man is famously reclusive and paranoid. So he has to infiltrate Desmond’s inner circle by getting a child into Eden Academy, befriend Desmond’s son and get into that mansion.

With the application deadline looming, Twilight (now known as Loid Forager) adopts a kid and manages to finagle a wife just in time. Unbeknowst to him, his child, Anya, is actually a telepath and his wife, Yor, is an assassin, alias Thorn Princess.

None of them know the other’s real skills. Well, except Anya but she’s terrified of revealing the facade in fear that Loid will take her back to the orphange so she has to do a fragile dance of playing along with the ruse while using her skills to help Twilight save the world. Yor has her own reasons for eloping with the man she knows as Loid since single women are considered very suspicious in this communist-esque society, she’s grateful that the marriage makes her seem normal and provide cover for her assassin activities. However, she comes to love the new family bonds she creates with Loid and Anya and will stab anyone who threatens their safety.

That’s the highlight of this series as the trio start to form real affection for the others, making them doubly certain of keeping their secret identities so they can keep their little family and try to incorporate it as long as they can with their “regular” lives.

Endo’s world has shades of the 60s/70s with present day technology, creating a vintage James Bond atmosphere with the humor that comes from these highly trained spies and assassins struggle in acting like regular human beings especially Twilight whose new role as a father is endearingly fraught with his overanalysis of everything and determination to be the most normal father ever. Which Anya uses to her advantage in convincing him that buying her candies and dressing in tacky tourist shirts is the best way to do so.

Plus the side characters are quite fun too. There’s Franky, Twilight’s tech guy who is sometimes wrangled as a babysitter and whose attempts at flirting with anyone is pathetically funny. There’s Yor’s brother, Yuri, whose love for his sister veers into creepy but provides drama as his role as Head SS agent and interrogator threatens Twilight’s mission since Yuri is ready to execute Loid the second he hurts his older sister and he doesn’t even know that Twilight is the infamous Twilight.

Anya’s own mission in befriending Desmond is adorable as she’s a truly weird kid among all the trust fund brats but her imagination and empathy (with a side helping of telepathy) make her attempts and failures fun to read.

Plus there’s characters introduces later on that provide new obstacles and revelations for the trio to become more immersed in their lies and point them to reconsider their priorities like Twilight’s protege, Nightfall who has a huge crush on her mentor and seeks to ursurp Yor, and the Bond the future-seeing dog.

Not to mention the obvious slow-burn between Loid and Yor that point to them developing real feelings and I can’t wait for the storm that will happen when their real identities are revealed.

But until that happens, I’m looking forward to volume 11 and 12 and watching the netflix adaptation.