Reviews with content warning for Colonisation - Portrait of a Thief

Reviews tagging 'Colonisation'

Portrait of a Thief by Grace D. Li

67 reviews

directorpurry's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional funny hopeful inspiring medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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bitofadisgrace's review against another edition

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adventurous reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

The book focused a lot more on character reflection than I expected, and I wish we could've seen a little more of the heists than we did—I don't know if "thriller" is necessarily the correct categorization, but I still enjoyed this a lot!

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recycled_personalities's review

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adventurous medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

knowing that it will be made into a netflix film definitely describes it better than i ever could. it could be a decent netflix movie.

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i_island's review

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adventurous emotional hopeful informative reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.75

I was initially thinking that I would give this book one star, but that’s honestly very hard for me to do and it redeemed itself a lot at the end.

I found the ending to be a very interesting and satisfying conclusion to an otherwise—at best—mediocre book.

The characters blended together too much to be seen as separate and, in the end, the heists themselves seemed to get both too much and too little attention.

It’s not the worst thing in existence (so far that title still belongs to lord of the flies), but its not good in any stretch of the word.

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cassielaj's review

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adventurous hopeful reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

Stunning. Loved it. Art heists, confronting colonialism, personal growth, accepting the past and finding hope for the future… just read this. It’s so good.

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kates_books's review

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adventurous emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.75

I loved the concept of this book: stealing back stolen art; A heist with purpose; Centering the Asian American experience; capturing the feelings of never being enough.

The cover for this book is AMAZING. However, the book fell a bit short for me because I wanted it to be a much faster read — it’s a heist novel so I felt like there needed to be more action and less internal reflection. Though I will say that the reflection is really what captured the important themes of the book, so maybe I wish it was just a bit shorter. Similarly, this mix of heist and reflection made it feel like a weird mix of genres — was it a thriller or was it literary fiction? While the relationships of the book were quite obvious, I liked the twist at the end. I also really liked the characters — while some people at my work book club said that they needed more backstory for each character, I found them relatable — obviously I can’t fully relate with the Asian-American experience, but the characters being college students / recent grads was something I could identify with and the author wrote that experience really well. I also liked that the author including references to the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement.

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