American Spy a Cold War spy thriller like you've never read before

This was a terrific, character-driven work disguised as an espionage thriller. Wilkinson offers an insightful narrative that is as much about the Black experience in America as it is about political intrigue and spy craft.

I should have liked this book more. It was in my genre wheelhouse, well written and a good story that did hold my interest. I never came to care about the characters, except one and he wasn’t in it enough. But I don’t want to discourage anyone from reading it. If you like the description, give it a try, you might like better than I.

Really enjoyed this book. An interesting story and written in a unique way as a letter to her children and going back and forth in time.

Hmm, I don't know. It's a very good read, especially the Africa bits (which I found engaging); but the characters' motivations seemed odd and unknowable, and that made me disconnect a lot. (Could be because of the form - a letter/diary). Also really unsettled by the central character thing.

This book had a lot of promise and strong writing. I didn’t like the plot device that it was written as a letter because it kept taking me out of the action and lowered the stakes and active feeling of the plot. I’ll definitely read Wilkenson’s next book. I think she’s got enormous promise as a writer and I’m looking forward to seeing what she does next.

Not what I had expected from something appearing to be soy fiction, but the mismatched expectations helped the fiction overall, I think. I’m not sure if it’s intentionally subversive. Ideologically it certainly seems to be when compared to a typical spy/thriller style book. The book is written as though the main character is leaving the story of her life for her young children, jumping back and forth from her young life to more current events, and why she is leaving her children in the first place and leaving her story behind. It’s a fairly slow story with not much action. But it was interesting throughout. The most interesting part was her perspective in the FBI/ CIA/ American ideologies, in general—especially as it is executed abroad.

The ending is good but it feels abrupt, after the time we took to get there. Interesting read though.

Black female espionage!!! Need I say anything else. Lauren Wilkinson's debut novel was engaging and griping, enthralling at every turn in narration. I can't wait for more Wilkinson books!

American Spy wasn’t the book I was expecting, but it was one that I ended up loving. In this slow burn, Marie Mitchell is lured away from her dead end job with the FBI to go undercover in a shady operation looking to take down the communist backed leader of Burkina Faso during the height of the Cold War. When you hear “spy novel” you might, like me, be envisioning a fast paced suspense thriller, but American Spy is much more John le Carré than Tom Clancy. But that slower pace gives the story space to breathe and really explore its ideas on what it means to be a Black American tasked with protecting and defending a country that doesn’t protect or defend you. I also learned a lot about the history of Burkina Faso and the way the Cold War was played out with foreign countries. My only quibble is that, due to the narrative device that the book is actually a letter to Marie’s sons, it ends rather abruptly and left me wanting more concrete answers than it was interested in giving.

A spy novel from a perspective rarely shown! The story was captivating, and untangling the thread with Marie about her mission was equally horrifying and expected (on a certain level). I found myself listening to this book long after my walks were over, which is rare for me. There’s a lot to say on the ways racism, imperialism and sexism shaped Marie’s life and “mission”, but I don’t feel qualified to talk about it. I will say that listening to the different higher ups justify interfering in another country’s government was a sad reminder that we do that all. The. Time.

This is a much better novel if you ignore the marketing and dust jacket quotes calling this a spy thriller. Instead it reads like a love letter from a mother to her sons. It took me a while to make that connection but once I did, the book changed for me. Go in with that perspective, and I think this a great read.