MY FRIEND THE SPY, by Roberta Seret

Readers’ Favorites Reviews:

Review #1: Reviewed by: Olga Markova

(Review Rating: 5 Stars)

My Friend The Spy by Roberta Seret is an engrossing blend of spy thriller, psychological thriller, historical fiction, and clean romance. It is New York, September 2022. Professor Sybil Edwards is teaching Advanced English conversation and Film at the United Nations. She finds herself in a complex relationship with Laryssa Pavlovich, her teaching assistant. Sybil suspects that Laryssa is a spy. Trying to learn more about Laryssa, Sybil befriends her and becomes a witness to events proving that Larissa’s life is in peril. Then comes summer 2023. Visiting her brother in Mexico, Sybil meets Alexey, her brother’s neighbor. Alexey gets distraught when Sybil mentions Laryssa. A series of life-threatening attacks on Sybil and Alexey follows. Who are Laryssa and Alexey? Who is attacking them and why?

Reading My Friend The Spy, I could not put it down until the end. Roberta Seret commendably translated her work experience at the United Nations and International Cinema Education NGO into this eventful, fast-moving, and thought-provoking story. Sybil’s cinema tutorials were both educationally informative about films teaching global events, and enhanced the relationships and the characters of Sybil and Laryssa. The scenes in the atmospheric Mayan lagoon were especially riveting, as their serene beauty contrasted with the unexpected perils for the characters and building up the suspense. The ending that opens the door for a sequel was very satisfying, too. This praiseworthy novel will appeal to fans of spy thrillers and readers interested in history, international affairs, and politics of the U.S.A., Mexico, Romania, Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus.

Review #2: Asher Syed 

(Review Rating: 5 Stars)

My Friend the Spy by Roberta Seret begins with educator Sybil Edwards, who goes about her daily teaching and personal observations while monitoring Laryssa Pavlovich, a Belarusian operative. Laryssa moves between New York and Minsk, managing family obligations, diplomatic cover, and intelligence work. She carries out clandestine CIA missions to track Belarusian leadership, document political abuses, and support the return of abducted Ukrainian children. Sybil notes Laryssa’s movements, interviews, and communications, recording her involvement with chess networks, espionage operations, and international strategy. Laryssa reconnects with her former love, Alexey, in Mexico, coordinating operational security while sharing intelligence. Together, they handle threats from Russian and Belarusian agents, plan interventions, and conduct clandestine missions, all while maintaining personal connections and public appearances amid ongoing war, surveillance, and geopolitical maneuvering. 

Roberta Seret’s My Friend the Spy is a wonderfully immersive story that walks the line between a sweeping espionage plot and the deeply personal lives of its characters, doing this through Sybil’s first-person perspective and a shift to a variant with Laryssa and Alexey. This happens organically and is really well done. Perhaps the most impressive part to me is the procedural elements, from Laryssa’s covert operations and strategic planning to her work within Belarusian and international intelligence networks, providing an authentic view of spycraft that is informed and meticulous. The settings are as fully fleshed out as Seret’s characters, whether it’s bustling cities, serene gardens, or the jungles of Mexico, and the texture offers readers a strong sense of presence. Every mission, conversation, and observation contributes to a read that is exciting, intelligent, and satisfying, and I look forward to seeing what Seret comes up with next. Very highly recommended.

Review #3: Review by Romuald Dzemo

(Review Rating: 5 Stars)

Roberta Seret’s My Friend the Spy follows Sybil, a New York-based English and film teacher at the United Nations, as she develops a complex friendship with her enigmatic teaching assistant, Laryssa Pavlovich. Laryssa, once a media star and political insider in Belarus, is now the wife of a Belarusian military attaché, living in New York as the war in Ukraine rages. As Sybil grows closer to Laryssa, she uncovers layers of intrigue: Laryssa’s ties to the autocratic Lukashenko regime, her underground resistance work using chess clubs to help the Ukrainian cause, and her haunted past shaped by Soviet espionage and family secrets. Their relationship deepens against a backdrop of bomb scares, political murders, and global events, culminating in Mexico, where Sybil meets Alexey, Laryssa’s old lover, and realizes the tangled web of love, loyalty, and survival that characterizes Laryssa’s life. The novel intertwines Sybil’s own survival story as a cancer patient with Laryssa’s fight for redemption, as both women search for meaning—and safety—in a world of shifting allegiances.

What makes My Friend the Spy particularly compelling is Roberta Seret’s ability to blend fact with fiction, infusing the narrative with real-world geopolitics, Belarus’s dark complicity in Russia’s war, and the inner lives of women working in the shadows of autocracy. The characters are vividly drawn: Laryssa, with her fiery red hair and veiled motives, is sympathetic and suspect, at once a victim and a manipulator. Sybil, the narrator, is driven by curiosity, empathy, and a hunger for truth that resonated with me. The setting in New York is vividly described, with details such as foggy Manhattan mornings. Themes of power, ambition, guilt, and redemption are excellently developed through literary and cinematic metaphors, particularly the recurring motif of chess as both a game and a metaphor for war. I enjoyed the writing, the captivating first-person narrative voice, the memorable characters, and the plot twists. It felt like reading a story taking place on the contemporary political stage.