Rating: 
Summary: Get out your decoder ring...
Review: As a long-time Andy Prieboy fan, I had fun translating the book from it's fictional names to the real ones! I was one of those dedicated fans at "The Empire Club" while the whole musical was being developed/fine tuned. I was also a regular at The Uncab where Merrill Markoe had performed. It was great to hear all of the old stories again that Andy would recall during his gigs. After moving away from LA, it's been years since I've had the honor of seeing his brilliant shows. Being out of the loop, it was also a bit of an update about the status of the musical. I am excited to hear that more books are to come and that the musical may finally get off its feet. Thank God he didn't "sell out" to do the musical "their way". *That* would have been too WTWL!
Good luck Andy - I hope you become a hit AND rich to spite them all!
Rating:
Summary: Really enjoyed it.
Review: I bought the book at the urging of a friend and didn't really expect to get in to it as much as I did. but it really hit home. THe combination of funny and painfully honest was great. I seriously couldn't put it down until I finished it. I especially recommend it to anyone who has had love go spectacularly wrong for them.
Rating:
Summary: Completely addictive
Review: I couldn't stop reading this book once I started. It is riveting, hilarious and astute.
Rating: 
Summary: Like Listening to a Whiny Friend
Review: I have *loved* all of Merril's works before; she is fabulously funny. But this book is not.
I hate to *dog* her on this book, but it was horrible. It was like listening to someone complain about a stupid boyfriend. Everyone has a friend that tells every boring detail of their on/off again love life with one person (or several). It's agony because they are so stupid and no one wants to know all that crap anyway.
That's how I found the book--full of email horror stories that weren't interesting or funny. The email exchanges were trite, tired, uninspiring, and not a laugh among them. I wanted to return the book to the store because I hated it so much.
I have never written a negative review on amazon, but I was so upset because the quality of Merrill's humor had gone to dumpster diving/Deleted email folder. I'm sorry. I don't mean to hurt your feelings. But I hope you find your lively, lovely sense of humor and adventure again because your other work is soooo good, and this was sooooo bad.
Rating:
Summary: Great
Review: I loved it. I picked it up on a Friday night and didn't put it down for two days. I liked both characters. I liked the wit and the interplay. I liked the view of show business and rock and roll. I liked everything.
Rating:
Summary: Yikes. Its my Life.
Review: I never related to characters more strongly than I did to those in Psycho Ex GAme. I am embarrassed to admit this is the story of my life.Once I started reading I couldnt stop.THen I bought copies for all my friends.
Rating: 
Summary: Not the Best
Review: I'm a big fan of Merrill Markoe and her writing, but this left me cold. While I enjoyed reading it, part of the fun was trying to guess who the characters are in real life. Yes, it sent me looking for Wall of Voodoo's back catalog and Markoe's other (nonfoction) writing but the ending left me cold and the characters seemed poorly developed. The quirks (like her artistic endeavors with recipe cards) were what kept me going. Try her earlier nonfiction stuff, it doesn't disappoint.
Rating: 
Summary: I really wanted to like this book, but....
Review: The idea of the story is this: Lisa and Grant meet, then start swapping emails about their Psycho Exes. Unfortuantely, it reads like a cut and paste from their Outlook outboxes. Where is the climax? What is the point? I couldn't even seem to find sympathy for the main "characters" (autobiographers) who would allow themselves to stay in such horrendous relationships for years on end, and then choose to air thier thinnly veiled dirty laundry in first-draft book form. I found myself skimming the "points awarded" sections because they were an unneccesary brief summation of the 2 previous pages. I smell filler.
All in all, it is a fresh idea. Great potential. But I left the book feeling like I just read a book on how to be a voluntary victim, then find someone who feels sorry for you because they did the same thing.
Rating:
Summary: Addictive Pleasure
Review: This book grabbed me and wouldn't let me go. I even had to take it with me to the bathroom. The two characters and hilarious and sensitive and I really cared about every detail of their story. Yes, they are writing about their "psycho exes" but the books is really a story about their relationship. Is the scary, abusive ex of Markoe's really David Letterman? Yep.
Rating:
Summary: 2 stars because I actually finished it
Review: This could have been a good book. It's a good idea, and I did enjoy the shifting points of view with each chapter. I *did* like Lisa's hobby of collecting out of date recipe cards and making them into faces. Some of the better faces made me laugh out loud.
However, I felt like the email conversations went on entirely too long and after a while I felt like they were all the same. I also didn't care for how every email started "Dear Lisa/Grant." I know that's picky, but if this is meant to mimic how people communicate now through email it should have been a little more consistent with how people actually send emails and less like formal letters. Though, maybe that formal letter feeling is meant to invoke the idea of love letters they weren't sending each other. In any case, it felt whiny and sort of flat, and when I put it down I said "blech."
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