“The Spy Who Loved Me” is the most unusual of Ian Fleming’s Bond novels, and worth reading for exactly that reason. It is narrated by Viv Michel, a young Canadian woman, and Bond only arrives two-thirds through, when two criminals put her in grave danger. Some readers find its heroine drawn with more sensitivity than Fleming’s reputation suggests, and read the book as a revealing look at its author.

The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.

About the book

The Spy Who Loved Me is the ninth novel and tenth book in Ian Fleming's James Bond series, first published by Jonathan Cape on 16 April 1962. It is the shortest and most sexually explicit of Fleming's novels, as well as the only Bond novel told in the first person. Its narrator is a young Canadian woman, Viv Michel. Bond himself does not appear until two-thirds of the way through the book, arriving at precisely the right moment to save Viv from being raped and murdered by two criminals. Fleming wrote a prologue to the novel giving the character Viv credit as a co-author.

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Where the score comes from

The sources average 6.1 across 67 ratings — not yet many, so the reader vote carries 31% of the weight and the rest pulls toward the Spy & espionage average of 7.6. That is how 7.1 comes out.