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— Kirkus Reviews (starred) Best Fiction Books of 2021
"Through her wide-eyed young heroine, Thurm wonderfully conveys the fantasies, disillusions, and vanities of literary New York in the late 1970s. Her biting sketches of the era’s key figures bring that lost world alive in granular detail."
— Andrea Barrett, author of The Air We Breathe and Archangel
"Thurm spins a story about love and ambition, and the cost of both, focusing on a desperate-to-be-known writer, her philandering boss, her confused, straying husband, and the wily paramour who’s out to blackmail him. Smart, savvy, heartbreakingly funny, and oh so wise, with prose like sparklers on every page. Writers are going to absolutely adore this book, but hey, so will everyone else on the planet."
— Caroline Leavitt, New York Times bestselling author of Picture of You and With or Without You
"Sparkling. . .[with] a bouncy roman à clef charm."—Publisher's Weekly
"Clever, surprising plots developments abound, and exquisitely drawn characters have their perceptions radically changed when they are forced to confront temptations, conflicts and unexpected challenges. Thurm's literary authority is on full display in this deeply engrossing and dramatically juicy novel."—Shelf Awareness
"This is the book I needed and adored. With writing so beautiful; but wait don't mistake 'beautiful' for ' at the expense of storytelling' because A Blackmailer's Guide to Love gave me characters so real, so sympathetic, so human, that their good and bad deeds made for compulsive, rewarding, delicious reading. When you can't wait to tell your novel-loving friends about the treat they have in store, that is the test of true book love."—Elinor Lipman, author of Rachel to the Rescue and Good Riddance
"If Dorothy Parker had tried writing Fatal Attraction, she might have come up with something like this wonderfully wry roman à clef about New York's overheated literary world in the 70s. Although Marian Thurm is a far more compassionate observer of human nature, and her appealingly troubled characters, by turns funny, touching and unsettling, are completely her own."—Suzanne Berne, author of The Dogs of Littlefield