Review: Heist Society by Ally Carter

Title: Heist Society
Author: Ally Carter
Series: Heist Society #1
Genre: Caper (YA)
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When Katarina Bishop was three, her parents took her 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 her back into the world she tried so hard to escape. But he has good reason: a powerful mobster’s art collection has been stolen, and he wants it returned. 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 (very crooked) history–and, with any luck, steal her life back along the way.

There are a few slight spoilers in this review, but I don’t think it will ruin the book if you haven’t read it.

Heist Society was a lot of fun to read. It’s light and quick. I loved that it wasn’t written in first person. Even though the story focuses primarily on Kat, the third-person voice allows the reader a lot of insight into the story. I liked being able to see almost everything involved in the planning of the heist and not just what Kat was doing or thinking.

“And I didn’t choose it, Kat. I chose you.” Hale

I thought it was a lot of fun to be a part of the family, a family who has orchestrated heists for generations. Although the main characters are on the other side of the law, it was fun to see the difference between them and the real “bad” guy. Kat only wanted to help her dad and return art pieces to their rightful owners. The bad guy, Arturo Taccone, on the other hand, wanted the items for himself and would do anything to get them.

My only complaint (for lack of a better word) is the lack of back story for some of the characters. (I like character-driven stories rather than plot-driven ones, and I felt this book was maybe just a little too plot-driven.) When I had the chance to meet Ally Carter, she said she likes to get down to business and not bore her readers with all the nitty gritty details. While I appreciated the lack of long, drawn out impertinent descriptions you find in so many other novels, I wanted to know more about the characters, especially Hale. I wanted to know if his parents, who are very absent in the novel and his life, know that he hangs around thieves and is involved in these crimes. (His butler, Marcus, definitely knows since he helps with the heists.) Maybe, however, just like the fact that no one knows what the two Ws in Hale’s name stand for, readers aren’t meant to know that much about Hale this early in the series. If that’s the case, then I can wait, hopefully patiently, to see what unfolds. I just hope we get to know Hale better, and that there’s a little more romance in the later books.