Rating: 
Summary: 2 fast 2 funny
Review: This book is a hilarious and spot-on look at the single guy life in Manhattan. Guys, we've all been there: trying to cook dinner for a young lovely but discovering we only own one pan, one pot and one plate; wondering whether our shoes will pass muster with the unforgiving modern style-hungry female; trying to deflect mom's hints that we need to settle down. For women readers, all I can say is: if you want to know how guys think, here it all is, in glorious technicolor detail. One of the finest, edgiest books of the year.
Rating:
Summary: WICKED HUMOR, HIP DIALOGUE, AND SHARP INSIGHT
Review: He's been dubbed "The male Bridget Jones." You can call his debut novel Guy Lit if you wish, but gals will find it unputdownable, too - it's a rare glimpse into the male mind related with wicked humor, hip dialogue, and sharp insight. An editor at People magazine, Kyle Smith said, "Someone has to speak up for that dwindling minority, the non-metrosexual straight male." Speak up he did producing one of the most clever debut novels of the year. Protagonist Tom Farrell (who may, for all we know, slightly resemble the author) works at a fictional Big Apple daily, Tabloid. He's been there for ten years now, coming up with such forgettable headlines as "The Stripping News" for an article on topless bars, and "Sects and the City" to top an article about a new Jewish group. Distraction and love enters his life in the form of a shapely, tiny-waisted co-worker, Julia. Tom is hooked but he's not quite deft at hooking her. To this end he receives advice, support, and tongue-lashings from his buds, including Shooter, A-Rod, and Bran (a gal pal). There's a wide divide between dating and mating. Is Julia really the one? How's a guy to know? However, the year is 2001. It is summer and September is yet to come, and with it many changes. Put "Love Monkey" at the top of your To Read list - it's not to be missed. - Gail Cooke
Rating:
Summary: Loved it!
Review: This is the best book I've read in a LONG time. And I am a woman who did not find the main character at all annoying. Quite, the opposite--I thought he was charming, sweet and real. And I wanted him to get the girl really bad. But was also glad that it didn't end as simply as that. Now I don't know what the deal is with the amazon reviewer who trashed it, but it seriously must be some crazy who thinks they are a writer and is mad because Kyle Smith didn't review their book in People magazine or something. I mean, there is no need to be that nasty, it has got to be something personal against the author considering that the whole review is just sooooooooooooo off base. Anyway, this is a seriously good book, can't wait for the next thing Smith writes.
Rating:
Summary: stands out in the fiction jungle
Review: Why do books about dating have to be so dumb? Why do they have to be filled with predictable plots, cardboard characters and silly settings that bear no resemblance to reality? If you've ever thought any of this, Love Monkey is the solution. Smith's protagonist, a cute but sometimes crusty newspaperman named Tom Farrell, is one of the most winning fictional creations to come along in years, and his friends all have plenty of sharp edges. Perhaps most unforgettable is his advice giver and boozy elder statesman Rollo, an Aussie hack who whines about his "trophy wife-a Westminster kennel club trophy" and gives Tom some outlandish advice about women that deep down kinda makes sense. His opposite number is Shooter, a guy so cool that he makes the alleged Alpha Male Mr. Big on Sex and the City look like Richard Simmons. The book is organized roughly around the songs of Bob Dylan and one very important passage from Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises: "it is easy to be hard-boiled about everything during the day, but at night it is another thing." That quote comes to have startling resonance as the book follows an unexpected path into the lives of supporting characters whose actions often belie their words. Shooter, it turns out, is a hopeless romantic just like our Tom, and the scene where that becomes clear at the end of a night of wicked debauchery is the best of the book. I won't spoil it for you, though. Smith also makes fine use of the lyrics of songs from Bob Dylan's brokenhearted masterpiece Blood on the Tracks, and Tom's ability to match every situation with a love song will remind a lot of us who came of age in the 1970s and 80s of ourselves. This is a wise, literate, altogether funny but also serious book that never stoops or panders to the audience. What a relief it is to pick up a novel about relationships in which every character is canny and intelligent-although many of them still can't help plunging into unwise choices because, hey, that's what love does to us.
Rating: 
Summary: Average Joe Meets Sex and the City
Review: Tom Farrell is an endearing guy with a sharp wit, a pretty good job at a New York tabloid, and a storehouse of old girlfriends. It's his reminiscences of what might have been and his deep lust over a co-worker that fuel this witty novel about a 30-something guy looking for Ms. Right in New York City. With Bob Dylan lyrics playing the soundtrack of his life, Tom spouts forth funny one-liners on every page. On his secret for cooking to impress girls---"For me, every recipe begins the same way: disable all alarms." On guy friends---"Chance may have brought us together, but alcohol made us friends." On depression: "When I find myself in times of trouble, Bloody Mary comes to me." Tom is a guy who tells us he wants Tom Cruise's smile, Bob Dylan's poetry, and Elvis's swagger. Unfortunately, he winds up with Tom Cruise's height, Bob Dylan's hair, and Elvis's liver. If you're looking to find the answer to what makes a man tick, you may not find it here. Unless they really are as shallow (...)as Tom is. Nevertheless, this is a pleasant diversion from the chick lit books that delve into every neurotic impulse women have. It proves, if nothing else, that men have their own set of problems, as well.
Rating: 
Summary: Really, Really Bad
Review: So who's the audience for this novel? It seems like Smith is reaching out to that barely literate segment of the population, you know, the ignorant masses who balance their time between sitcoms and shopping malls? If that is what he is aiming for than he couldn't have written his novel any better. The humor is at a low enough level to keep the average joe interested. Actually, the entire book reads like a script for a beer commercial, replete with male bonding, skirt chasing, self-deprecation, and that oh so essential bathroom humor. I don't know, it kind of entertains just by it's badness, like the movie "Gigli".
Rating:
Summary: frisky follies of love
Review: Smith works a little sleight of hand in this debut novel: he gives you an inside peek at a girl-loving bachelor that is so hilariously honest that you can't help forgiving the guy his less stellar moments on the road to finding a girlfriend. Much as the characters on Seinfeld constantly lied and tricked other people but were actually, somehow, not only funny but real and likeable, Smith's creation Tom Farrell will have you on his side from the first pages of his rapid-fire look at the unsettling contradictions of dating life in Manhattan. His observations across the male-female chasm are politically incorrect but thought-provoking, sometimes charming and endlessly, engagingly funny. I thoroughly enjoyed the book.
Rating:
Summary: massive laughs
Review: This book opens with a blisteringly funny riff on the trials and annoyances of being a long-suffering, 32-year-old bachelor, and the laughs rarely stop after that. Smith's novel is a fast-paced, fast-talking tale about bright young men on the make and the women they can't quite figure out. The main guy, Tom Farrell, is a cynical but lovelorn tabloid journalist with a hankering for a seemingly sweet girl named Julia a few cubicles over, but it's his best friend Shooter, an independently wealthy black guy with a killer smile, a few million bucks and a designer wardrobe, who is truly an unforgettable sidekick. Their brainy banter, and the banter between Tom and his kind-of friend, kind-of something else Bran, a black-haired TV reporter, will remind you of the wittiest romantic comedies of a bygone age. The book's a pleasure, and you'll find the pages going by so fast they'll nearly burn your fingers.
Rating:
Summary: hilarious and moving-a 6-star treat
Review: It only takes a few pages for Love Monkey to grow on you. The narrator of this fresh, fierce, funny first novel is a slightly jaded newspaper writer named Tom whose tired heart gets a nice jolt of energy when he meets a bookish, somewhat aloof coworker who spends many a flirtatious night in his company. When she turns out to have a serious boyfriend (and, oh yeah, she forgot to mention she was living with him), Tom is crushed and turns to other women for solace, especially his opposite number in TV news, Bran Lowenstein, a crusading, never-miss-a-trick news junkie who puts him down for being such a dope but occasionally kisses him savagely in the back seats of cabs. Very few books have so successfully and vividly captured life in present day New York City (I should know; I lived there until three years ago) without either the typical sugarcoating of sentimentality or the standard sitcom view of it as a place where young slackers sit around swapping one liners over coffee. This book has all the frantic energy, nervous laughs and intellectual sparring of sharp-eyed professionals in Manhattan, and for this former New Yorker, it all hit the target time and time again.
Rating:
Summary: I loved this book!
Review: What a fantastic, funny, in-depth look at relationships you'll find in Love Monkey. Smith's protagonist Tom Farrell is alternately winning, conniving, cute, self-confident, self-doubting and always altogether hilarious. Chick lit? Puh-leeze. This is so much better than the run of the mill boy-meets-girl story. It has amazing insights into every detail that makes up this mad scramble we call hooking up or dating or whatever. If you've enjoyed Seinfeld or Sex and the City, you're exactly the audience that will laugh along with this wise, fresh, sharp-witted first novel.
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