Borrowed Post

Borrowed post from my friend here: Awesome-Brarian


It's entitled Books I Really Wished I liked. Who doesn't have those books? Gosh knows that I have a few and in fact I owe a few reviews for those that follow me on Goodreads.

But anyhoo, read this:

Book I Really Wish I Liked: Heist Society

Next in the list of KAH-books, "Heist Society." A story of art-thievery, teenager rebellion, and Nazis (I love it when there's Nazis!)

And sadly, of all of the books I've read so far, this is the one I was most psyched for. So therefore it was the one that had to not be that good.



Kat is a 16 year old girl who, for the majority of her life, was a high-class thief. Like, suspended from the ceiling, Neal Caffrey, I-have-code-names-for-everything thief. Only then she left to go get book smart and leave this life behind.

And then her father is wrongfully accused of stealing five paintings from a guy who will make him an offer he can't refuse. And then, just when she thought she was out they pull her back in.

Yeah. Godfather references ftw.

Kat puts together a crew of not-at-all-memorable people, who put together a not-all-that-memorable-plan to steal the painting back from the Henley (fictional museum), where a grand art thief using a Thief Society Wild-Card-At-Uno pseudonym has stolen and hidden them behind *other paintings* for reasons more or less never explained/logical.

Then we find out the paintings were all grabbed by the Nazis (those guys!), and Kat get a love triangle that lasts for all of three chapters before the guy-we-all-knew-was-going-to-betray-her totally betrays her. And then there's some art-thievery and unexplained awesomeness.

Which honestly, was the biggest problem with this book-- there was no evidence of Kat's skill until she was actually robbing the museum. Up until that point, she'd been kind of mediocre-- every scene was punctuated with a secret internal thought of "Kat hoped no one was looking at her like she was out of practice, or didn't know what she was doing." None of the other characters were given more than their rudimentary stereotypes (hot chick, rich suave guy with a heart of gold, goofy twins, nerd) and if anyone was developed into a character, I must have missed it.

Which sucks because I really, *really* wanted to like this.

I mean, come on guys! Teenage art-thieves! There's a chick who looks like a technicolor Audrey Hepburn ala Breakfast at Tiffany's on the front! It should have been AWESOME! And maybe it could have been with another twenty chapters of time-- but as it was I kind of felt like I was eating junk food-- easy, cheap, and leaves you feeling like "wait, did I eat today?" after a few hours.