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3.66 AVERAGE
3.66 AVERAGE
It's not quite summer yet, but it's close enough for me to call The Steal a definite summer beach read. It's not terribly long - which is disappointing, if only because I wanted to wallow in 1950s jet-setting luxury a bit longer - but that's what makes it perfect for a day at the beach or lake.
We start in Cannes, shortly before the world-renowned film festival, and are thrown into the action immediately after a daring heist. Here the reader meets Jerome Curtis, a World War II veteran turned insurance private detective, as he tries to piece together how the unthinkable happened in a bustling, exclusive hotel. The book switches narratives back and forth between him and the woman in the eye of this high stakes hurricane, Ania Thorne. Ania is the one who designed the jewelry that was just stolen from under her nose; she is someone who lives and breathes gems and their precious metal settings and doesn't really know what to do with herself when she's away from her jeweler's bench.
From there, we follow Jerome and Ania to Paris and eventually to New York, and trouble is never far behind them. Their lives are at stake, Ania's reputation and family business are at stake, and there are even hints that Jerome's dark past, the past between the end of the war and where we pick up with him at the beginning of the novel, may be exposed as well.
The Steal piqued my curiosity and gave me a solid few hours of entertainment before I had burned through the whole story. Will we have more?
We start in Cannes, shortly before the world-renowned film festival, and are thrown into the action immediately after a daring heist. Here the reader meets Jerome Curtis, a World War II veteran turned insurance private detective, as he tries to piece together how the unthinkable happened in a bustling, exclusive hotel. The book switches narratives back and forth between him and the woman in the eye of this high stakes hurricane, Ania Thorne. Ania is the one who designed the jewelry that was just stolen from under her nose; she is someone who lives and breathes gems and their precious metal settings and doesn't really know what to do with herself when she's away from her jeweler's bench.
From there, we follow Jerome and Ania to Paris and eventually to New York, and trouble is never far behind them. Their lives are at stake, Ania's reputation and family business are at stake, and there are even hints that Jerome's dark past, the past between the end of the war and where we pick up with him at the beginning of the novel, may be exposed as well.
The Steal piqued my curiosity and gave me a solid few hours of entertainment before I had burned through the whole story. Will we have more?
This is set to be a classic romantic caper and begins as so. However, the characters felt a little off for me. To be specific would ruin the mystery but there were elements that just felt unbelievable. Not my sort of book, all in all, made worse by the ending not having a resolution that is satisfying. It's a two out of five for me on the enJOYment scale.
Content warning: it does include graphic sex scenes and foul language.
Content warning: it does include graphic sex scenes and foul language.
A charming read, with well-developed characters and a great sense of time and place. The insight into the relationship between jewelers and movie stars was a clever place to start, and the growing sexual attraction between the two protagonists was carried off very well.
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This past year I read two books by C.W. Gortner ,The Romanov Empress, and M.J. Rose's The Last Tiara and enjoyed both of them, so when NetGalley and Blue Box Press offered me The Steal, a collaboration between the authors, I was all in. I received an ARC in exchange for an honest review. The book will be released August 10.
The Steal is a quick read, more like a novella than a full-length novel. Things move fast with the plot, too. The setting is practically Cannes one day, Paris the next, and New York the third. The plot keeps moving along with both Ania, the jeweler, and Jerome, the insurance investigator’s points of view.
Overall, I enjoyed the story and the pacing, and while I have no need for them personally, imagining hundreds of thousands of dollars of jewels in intricate designs was fun. Jerome is sort of a stereotypical detective, of scruffy face and schlumpy dress, ala Columbo, but he’s a lot younger and handsome in his scruffiness. He eludes to a dark past, which is revealed in time.
I was a little disappointed in the depiction of Ania as an icy woman who’d never had a proper man show her a good time. Sparks fly between her and Jerome, and you know it’s just a matter of time before they get together. What surprised me was how quickly they got together. Like I said, things move FAST in The Steal. And things get a bit graphic, for those that don’t like that in their romantic mysteries.
As Jerome and Ania try to avoid the Leopard, the famous jewel thief who’s never been caught but seems to have a vendetta against Ania’s company in particular. Jerome figures it has something to do with his shady past post-WWII as someone in covert ops hunting down Nazis because the guard Ania employs happens to be one of his old army buddies. The Leopard knows who they are and what they’ve done.
Jerome and Ania close in on the elusive thief, and just when you think the story is about to wrap up, it just ENDS! Looking into it, it appears this is the first in a series of caper books about The Leopard. Apparently Gortner and Rose enjoyed Alfred Hitchcock’s To Catch a Thief as much as me because this book reminds me of it. Even the cover features a woman who looks suspiciously like Grace Kelly. That being said, I will continue with the series to get to know Ania and Jerome a little better.
This past year I read two books by C.W. Gortner ,The Romanov Empress, and M.J. Rose's The Last Tiara and enjoyed both of them, so when NetGalley and Blue Box Press offered me The Steal, a collaboration between the authors, I was all in. I received an ARC in exchange for an honest review. The book will be released August 10.
The Steal is a quick read, more like a novella than a full-length novel. Things move fast with the plot, too. The setting is practically Cannes one day, Paris the next, and New York the third. The plot keeps moving along with both Ania, the jeweler, and Jerome, the insurance investigator’s points of view.
Overall, I enjoyed the story and the pacing, and while I have no need for them personally, imagining hundreds of thousands of dollars of jewels in intricate designs was fun. Jerome is sort of a stereotypical detective, of scruffy face and schlumpy dress, ala Columbo, but he’s a lot younger and handsome in his scruffiness. He eludes to a dark past, which is revealed in time.
I was a little disappointed in the depiction of Ania as an icy woman who’d never had a proper man show her a good time. Sparks fly between her and Jerome, and you know it’s just a matter of time before they get together. What surprised me was how quickly they got together. Like I said, things move FAST in The Steal. And things get a bit graphic, for those that don’t like that in their romantic mysteries.
As Jerome and Ania try to avoid the Leopard, the famous jewel thief who’s never been caught but seems to have a vendetta against Ania’s company in particular. Jerome figures it has something to do with his shady past post-WWII as someone in covert ops hunting down Nazis because the guard Ania employs happens to be one of his old army buddies. The Leopard knows who they are and what they’ve done.
Jerome and Ania close in on the elusive thief, and just when you think the story is about to wrap up, it just ENDS! Looking into it, it appears this is the first in a series of caper books about The Leopard. Apparently Gortner and Rose enjoyed Alfred Hitchcock’s To Catch a Thief as much as me because this book reminds me of it. Even the cover features a woman who looks suspiciously like Grace Kelly. That being said, I will continue with the series to get to know Ania and Jerome a little better.
I just love the French Riviera and Paris – the glamour, the beauty, the history, the champagne, and the excitement! So I was happy to join the #letstalkbookpromo tour for #The Steal by #CWGortner and @mjroseauthor.
The book is a fun jewel heist caper with a beautiful jeweler, Ania Thorpe (would be a social media influencer today!) and attractive ex-military covert op – now insurance investigator Jerome Curtis– thrown together when the jewels designed by Ania’s company (to be worn at the Cannes Film Festival by the likes of Elizabeth Taylor and Audrey Hepburn) are stolen!
How could this happen with every security detail in place?! That is the question!
And there you have it – the gritty and fun 1950s detective procedural begins unwinding – told from the perspective of Ania and Jerome in alternating chapters - transporting you to 1950s Cannes and Paris and New York City.
There is intrigue, adventure, car chases – and more… think “To Catch a Thief” with Grace Kelly and Cary Grant mixed in with James Bond and the Pink Panther. Great armchair travel for those of us missing those trips away.
This is a quick and fun read that unfolds as if you were watching a movie. In fact, this should be a movie. I loved getting to know the characters and with a cliffhanger ending – left me wanting to “watch” the next season….Thank you @letstalkbookpromo @getredprbooks and @mjroseauthor for the opportunity to read this e-book ARC.
The book is a fun jewel heist caper with a beautiful jeweler, Ania Thorpe (would be a social media influencer today!) and attractive ex-military covert op – now insurance investigator Jerome Curtis– thrown together when the jewels designed by Ania’s company (to be worn at the Cannes Film Festival by the likes of Elizabeth Taylor and Audrey Hepburn) are stolen!
How could this happen with every security detail in place?! That is the question!
And there you have it – the gritty and fun 1950s detective procedural begins unwinding – told from the perspective of Ania and Jerome in alternating chapters - transporting you to 1950s Cannes and Paris and New York City.
There is intrigue, adventure, car chases – and more… think “To Catch a Thief” with Grace Kelly and Cary Grant mixed in with James Bond and the Pink Panther. Great armchair travel for those of us missing those trips away.
This is a quick and fun read that unfolds as if you were watching a movie. In fact, this should be a movie. I loved getting to know the characters and with a cliffhanger ending – left me wanting to “watch” the next season….Thank you @letstalkbookpromo @getredprbooks and @mjroseauthor for the opportunity to read this e-book ARC.
I was immediately interested in this book because its cover evoked some of the books I read in high school by Mary Stewart and Phyllis A. Whitney.
The story setting is glamourous, with a daring heist of several pieces of high-end jewelry intended for various actors to wear at the Cannes film festival in 1950. The two leads have much to lose if they fail to recover the stolen jewels. Insurance Investigator Jerome Curtis is off balance when he meets cool and tough jewelry designer and CEO of her company, Anya Thorne. They race around from Cannes to Paris to New York City, chasing leads and getting to know each other.
The two authors switch PoV between the two characters, so that we can learn a little of their histories, so we learn about Anya's relationship with her somewhat mercurial father and founder of the jewelry company, and we also learn a little about Jerome's activities immediately following the war.
I was not particularly enamoured by Jerome's constant pointing out Anya's "alabaster" skin or icy beauty. This got old really fast. I am so tired of hearing how having alabaster skin automatically makes someone seem so beautiful.
Also, this book doesn't have the snappy pace both Stewart or Whitney were great at writing, even though the plot still moves reasonably well. I say this because though this was a pretty short book, it took me much longer to get through it than I expected.
So, this this was diverting, but not as much as I had hoped.
Thank you to Netgalley and the Publisher for this ARC in exchange for a review.
The story setting is glamourous, with a daring heist of several pieces of high-end jewelry intended for various actors to wear at the Cannes film festival in 1950. The two leads have much to lose if they fail to recover the stolen jewels. Insurance Investigator Jerome Curtis is off balance when he meets cool and tough jewelry designer and CEO of her company, Anya Thorne. They race around from Cannes to Paris to New York City, chasing leads and getting to know each other.
The two authors switch PoV between the two characters, so that we can learn a little of their histories, so we learn about Anya's relationship with her somewhat mercurial father and founder of the jewelry company, and we also learn a little about Jerome's activities immediately following the war.
I was not particularly enamoured by Jerome's constant pointing out Anya's "alabaster" skin or icy beauty. This got old really fast. I am so tired of hearing how having alabaster skin automatically makes someone seem so beautiful.
Also, this book doesn't have the snappy pace both Stewart or Whitney were great at writing, even though the plot still moves reasonably well. I say this because though this was a pretty short book, it took me much longer to get through it than I expected.
So, this this was diverting, but not as much as I had hoped.
Thank you to Netgalley and the Publisher for this ARC in exchange for a review.
This story was more lighthearted and romance-y than my usual reads, but it was a fun one (jewel thief + Cannes + Paris + hot investigator + hot jewel lady), and I really enjoyed it. I especially loved picturing Ania’s clothes and what the jewelry looked like. The ending was a bit abrupt, so it seems like a sequel is in order!
* thanks to NetGalley and Blue Box Press for the eARC. This came out August 10th!
* thanks to NetGalley and Blue Box Press for the eARC. This came out August 10th!
The book definitely captures the spirit of the great 1950s romantic mystery films with the hardboiled male lead and the icy princess heroine who may or may not need to be rescued (and who may or may not be able to be trusted) and the larger than life thief who is always three steps ahead in the game. For me, this was a fun caper until the end which was abrupt and seems to be setting up a series? I would have preferred another 30 pages to just have a good tale done with, to be honest; or if it's not the start of the series, it was a very unsatisfying ending.
*I received an ARC from NetGalley for this review*
*I received an ARC from NetGalley for this review*
adventurous
mysterious
medium-paced
adventurous
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
This is the first book in a trilogy and ends on a cliffhanger, which vexes me. Set in the 1950s, and told in alternating POVs like a romance novel, the plot has a cinematic “The Thomas Crown Affair” vibe. Jerome Curtis is an insurance investigator, sent to Cannes when an infamous jewelry thief strikes the International Film Festival, stealing the entire collection designed by Ania Thorne, head of Thorne & Company. It’s an entertaining, albeit predictable, heist novel, and not a bad way to spend an afternoon.