Rating: 
Summary: Bad Bad Bad
Review: I guess you have to be from New York to understand but I have never found barf (she's sick all the time from drinking all night) all that entertaining. Gray refers to throwing up at least three times in the first 4 chapters. This book left a bad taste in my mouth. I had a hard time reading it all the way through. All the big words in the world can't cover up lack of writing skills. I think this book perpetuates the myth that all PI's are sleezy. If all PI's were like Gray's, no one would ever hire a private investigator. Yuck!
Rating: 
Summary: I Spy... A Very Bad Book
Review: I know that this book has a bright pink cover and, therefore, from the get-go, doesn't raise extraordinarily high expectations, but I was extremely disappointed in this read.
This book has almost no plot. The characters are bordering on absurd, and they come and go as they please. The book jumps around chronologically, leaving the reader with little sense of what is happening when. The fact that Amy, the narrator, is a "private eye" is nowhere near as exciting as it's played out to be on the back cover - the most exciting thing that happens to her is she spends a lot of time on the phone, uncovering "secret identities" and packing her prose with a lot of esoteric lingo. I assume that this is meant to sound smart but really just makes the book difficult to wade through for those of us not in the PI profession.
Additionally, Amy's guy "problems" are incredibly repetitive, I don't think she deserves a boyfriend. Every time she gets a guy, she finds one little thing wrong with him. She dumps him, wallows in self-pity over how insane he was, and then meets a new guy, who is of course The One. At least until he does something crazy. And so the cycle continues.
This book had potential: otherwise I never would've walked out of the library with it. But once I had finished blowing through the text in about three hours, I was incredibly greatful that I hadn't spent ten bucks to buy it.
Rating: 
Summary: Ignore the obscene pink jacket and read on!
Review: I read about this book in the NY Times Style section and bought it in spite of the icky feeling the electric pink cover gave me. I was truly so put off I almost didn't pick it up, but after flipping through first few pages the author won me with her clever Dostoyevsky quote and I spent the ten bucks. This book had me cracking up for most of the day it took me to gobble it up. It's a fast, entertaining read and it's better written than most other drivel in this genre. It certainly deserves a better package. I say: write another book, and fire your publisher!
Rating:
Summary: Ignore the obscene pink jacket and read on!
Review: I read about this book in the NY Times Style section and bought it in spite of the icky feeling the electric pink cover gave me. I was truly so put off I almost didn't pick it up, but after flipping through first few pages the author won me with her clever Dostoyevsky quote and I spent the ten bucks. This book had me cracking up for most of the day it took me to gobble it up. It's a fast, entertaining read and it's better written than most other drivel in this genre. It certainly deserves a better package. I say: write another book, and fire your publisher!
Rating:
Summary: what would you expect from a magenta cover?
Review: If you are over-educated, twenty-something, and in the mood for some levity, check out Spygirl, the memoir of a young private eye by Amy Gray. Set in New York, Amy has just quit corporate hell as an editor's assistant, and decided to venture into the world of investigation at a place she calls The Agency. Fortunate for us, Gray spares us the ultra-mundane details of research and paperwork, and seasons the story with the juicy details of her ever-changing love life. But don't expect this to be a page-turner: Gray's story, though cute and trendy (would you expect anything else from a magenta cover?), is far from engrossing. Her plot is thin, and her concerns are either melodramatic or shallow. Even the highbrow quotations taken from Pynchon and DeLillo can't rescue this book from frivolity. And the trite, sometimes (unintentionally) embarrassing dialogue and adolescent preoccupation with a guy's looks gets dull after a while. But despite all this, the book is fairly well-written and even sprinkled with a few sophisticated ideas and poetic phrases. Though it's no work of art, Spygirl is worth reading if you're female, and fresh out of college. Anyway, it's quick and easy, and quite possibly, you can relate to A. Gray all too well, even if you are not a PI.
Rating:
Summary: What am I missing here?
Review: It's not so much the twelve dollars I wasted on this book. I can live with that. It's three hours out of my life that I wasted and can never get back. The money that Random House spent on this book would have been put to better use by buying toner cartridges for their New York offices. I kept turning the page, waiting for something to happen. Damn, I hope to God I was never this pretentious thirtyfive years ago. The writing style is a cheap knock-off of so many other angst-driven gen-X authors. I'm reading this book and thinking: do I really care about what happens to Amy Gray? Unfortunately, I don't. At least, not enough to keep turning the page.
Rating:
Summary: Style and Substance
Review: It's rare to find a writer of such flair who has a story so engaging. You can't make this stuff up! Spy Girl is definitely fun to read, but it also happens to be sharply insightful and thoughtful.
Rating:
Summary: a great book
Review: My reading group read Spygirl-we're (generally) single women in Chicago in our 20s/30s. A. Gray may not be the future director of the FBI (we wouldn't have bought that book, anyway) but she's a cool, kick-ass girl, struggling with her faults, dealing with dating and love, figuring out who she is, being goofy and funny all the way. We laughed with this book all the way, and SPYGIRL is making the rounds with my other friends now. If you want the typical mystery, this may not be your book, if you want a great novel that happens to be about a PI, read this book!
Rating:
Summary: a great book
Review: My reading group read Spygirl-we're (generally) single women in Chicago in our 20s/30s. A. Gray may not be the future director of the FBI (we wouldn't have bought that book, anyway) but she's a cool, kick-ass girl, struggling with her faults, dealing with dating and love, figuring out who she is, being goofy and funny all the way. We laughed with this book all the way, and SPYGIRL is making the rounds with my other friends now. If you want the typical mystery, this may not be your book, if you want a great novel that happens to be about a PI, read this book!
Rating:
Summary: Love, sweet love
Review: Spygirl chronicles the exodus of this bright and [i think] painfully honest author out of her 'corporate hell' publishing job into a new life as a private investigator. She lived out every little girl's 'Harriet the Spy meets Bond-girl' dreams. As Amy Gray conquers the run-down Chelsea warehouse loft-office and solves cases, the book is richly textured by the spirit of the City in a far more honest way than 'Sex and the City' ever has. You can truly feel how it is to be a single twenty-something in the often anonymous streets of New York. The story is as much about being a p.i. as it is about love [or, at least, the search for it]. I often found myself laughing out loud while reading this book, though in the end it is far more profound than the title might imply.
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