Indestructible, Undeniable: “The Assassin’s Guide to Babysitting” by Natalie C. Parker

Tru has a skill set that most babysitters don’t. Born into a family of assassins and gifted with the rare Talent of indestructibility, she’s been trained in knives, stealth, and every other discipline her reclusive adoptive guardian could teach her. She balances high school classes with the kind of extracurricular activities that don’t appear on a college application. She’s careful. She’s capable. And she is absolutely not supposed to get caught in the middle of an assassination attempt while babysitting a one-year-old. 

Everything Goes Wrong at Once 

Parker launches the story at full speed: the babysitting job is interrupted, an assassination attempt derails everything, and Tru finds herself fleeing with an infant and a flood of questions she has no immediate answers to. Who killed her parents—and is that mystery connected to what’s happening now? Who, exactly, can she trust? And what do you do about the girl who’s actively trying to kill you but is also, possibly, someone you want to kiss? 

That last complication—the enemies-to-romance tension with a female antagonist—is one of the novel’s sharpest pleasures. Parker plays it with wit and genuine emotional stakes, never letting the chemistry defuse the danger. 

A Protagonist Who Earns Every Page 

What makes Tru work as a narrator is that her extraordinary abilities don’t make her untouchable. Indestructibility protects her body but does nothing for her sense of identity, her grief over her parents, or the constant vigilance required to keep her true self hidden at school. She’s powerful and vulnerable in ways that don’t cancel each other out—which is exactly the kind of character that makes action fiction sing. 

Genre Pleasures, Smartly Executed 

“The Assassin’s Guide to Babysitting” delivers on every genre promise: the action sequences are kinetic and propulsive, the mystery unspools with satisfying momentum, and the relationship dynamics—romantic, familial, antagonistic—layer genuine emotional texture over the plot. Parker is a skilled architect of suspense, and this novel shows her working at the top of that skill set. 

It’s also, beneath the assassin mythology and the action beats, a story about identity under pressure: who Tru is when the training falls away, and what she’s willing to fight for when the stakes become personal in a completely new way. 

Perfect For 

High school readers (Grades 9–12) who love action, mystery, and character-driven suspense. Fans of Leigh Bardugo, Jennifer Lynn Barnes, or any series where capable heroines operate in high-stakes worlds. Queer representation is present and central. Strong conversation-starter about identity, trust, and the families we’re born into versus the ones we build.