Review: "If I Told You, I'd Have to Kiss You" by Mae Marvel

If I Told You, I'd Have to Kiss You by Mae Marvel
Published June 2025 via St. Martin's Griffin
★★★★

Take Mr. and Mrs. Smith and queer it up, and what do you get? You get If I Told You, I'd Have to Kiss You.

It was love at first sight for Yardley and KC, and three years later they're living together and still madly in love—and they've just broken up, because they're each carrying secrets that are pulling the relationship down. What they don't know: Those secrets are the same. They've both been working for the CIA for years...and things are about to get interesting.

She was five feet of coiled muscle with the kind of mind shining behind her eyes that made people not want to be the first one to talk, just in case they weren't as smart as they thought. (loc. 811*)

I have to be honest: I don't think the CIA works even a little bit the way it's depicted here, and for the sake of fiction, that's exactly the way I like it. This is spy stuff with sparkles (or perhaps a unicorn onesie?) on, with lots of red lipstick and tight dresses and blasting away at bad guys without so much as ruffling one's hair. It reminds me a bit of The Blonde Identity, and, well...I was here for it then, and I'm here for it now. Presumably CIA operatives have quite a lot more oversight and quite a lot less space to make decisions about what to do and when and why (although, what do I know), but it's a lot more fun when...well, when they get to run kind of rampant, and spy culture is basically a bunch of overgrown teenagers putting on a different wig for each party and pretending not to recognize each other.

The only downside here really has nothing to do with the book itself: there was a moment when I saw this that I thought it was a new Mabel Maney book, and when I tell you that my heart skipped a beat... Well. It's been too long. But at least if Mabel Maney doesn't have any new books coming out soon, there are other authors willing to take up the task of writing playful, improbable, queer spy novels.

Just one question remains: Can this be a series?

*Quotes are from an ARC and may not be final.

Thanks to the authors and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.