I recently read Heist Society by Ally Carter, and (spoiler alert!) I loved it! My sister has been begging me to read this trilogy for years, and I kept putting it off, but I finally read it just a few weeks ago, and I definitely wish I had read it earlier!
Summary
When Katarina Bishop was three, her parents took her on a trip to the Louvre…to case it. For her seventh birthday, Katarina and her Uncle Eddie traveled to Austria…to steal the crown jewels. When Kat turned fifteen, she planned a con of her own—scamming her way into the best boarding school in the country, determined to leave the family business behind. Unfortunately, leaving “the life” for a normal life proves harder than she’d expected.
Soon, Kat’s friend and former co-conspirator, Hale, appears out of nowhere to bring Kat back into the world she tried so hard to escape. But he has a good reason: a powerful mobster has been robbed of his priceless art collection and wants to retrieve it. Only a master thief could have pulled this job, and Kat’s father isn’t just on the suspect list, he is the list. Caught between Interpol and a far more deadly enemy, Kat’s dad needs her help.
For Kat, there is only one solution: track down the paintings and steal them back. So what if it’s a spectacularly impossible job? She’s got two weeks, a teenage crew, and hopefully just enough talent to pull off the biggest heist in her family’s history–and, with any luck, steal her life back along the way.
Review
Kat is such a feisty character – I immediately fell in love with her. The book starts off with her at boarding school. She has quit the family business and wants to have the best education that money can buy. All of that changes when W.W. Hale the Fifth comes back into her life and gets her kicked out of her prestigious academy. Throughout the book, Kat faces problems within her family because she wanted to leave the life they had set before her. You see Kat wrestling with her own destiny and choosing who she wants to be. She doesn’t choose anything because it’s the easy, or obvious choice. Everything she does, she does because that’s what is right for her, and I find that really admirable.
This book made me question everything that happened. Ally Carter gives you just enough information that you know something is happening, but you never get the full plan until it’s enacted. It makes the characters seem super-human as they pull of feats that you’re sure would never work in real life…or would they?
Heist Society is a teenage version of Oceans 11, complete with high hopes, high stakes, and high profile marks. This book is easily a 9/10!
So what do you think? Will you pick up Heist Society on your next trip to the bookstore?
-Stephanie
All Booked Up At The Moment 