Highly entertaining
Guardian Books of the Year
Gloriously readable and, at times, wickedly funny
Irish Times
<i>Sweet Tooth</i> takes the expectations and tropes of the Cold War thriller and ratchets up the suspense, while turning it into something else... A well-crafted pleasure to read, its smooth prose and slippery intelligence sliding down like cream
Independent
Sublime...impressive...rich and enjoyable
Financial Times
Riveting... Delicious... Gripping
Guardian
A brilliant portrayal of 1970s Britain at its absolute worst… But it's also a gripping spy novel with some characteristic McEwan twists toward the end
Mail on Sunday
A web of spying, subterfuge, deceit and betrayal... Acute, witty...winningly cunning
Sunday Times
Playful, comic... This is a great big Russian doll of a novel, and in its construction – deft, tight, exhilaratingly immaculate – is a huge part of its pleasure...exerts a keen emotional pull
Observer
McEwan’s mastery dazzles us in this superbly deft and witty story of betrayal and intrigue, love, and the invented self
GQ
Fans of Ian McEwan should rejoice with the arrival of this novel... An extraordinary, irresistible work of fiction
Sunday Business Post
'A web of spying, subterfuge, deceit and betrayal... Acute, witty...winningly cunning' Sunday Times
The year is 1972, the Cold War is far from over and Serena Frome, in her final year at Cambridge, is being groomed for MI5. Sent on Operation Sweet Tooth - a highly secret undercover mission - she meets Tom Haley, a promising young writer. First she loves his stories, then she begins to love the man. Can she maintain the fiction of her undercover life? And who is inventing whom? To answer these questions, Serena must abandon the first rule of espionage - trust no one.