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A review by paperprivateer
Medici Heist by Caitlin Schneiderhan
lighthearted
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.0
If you’re going to run a heist with a large payout, going against the Pope and the Medicis is the obvious target. The Medicis have been extorting money from the people of Tuscany for years, and the people in Florence remember a time before the family’s rule began. Rosa is a seventeen-year-old con artist who is determined to pull off the ultimate heist. She recruits Giacomo a master of disguise, Sarra a tinkerer, Khalid a fighter and Michelangelo the famous artist. With the background of the unrest in Florence, the small group tries to pull off the impossible.
While I wouldn’t consider this a particularly accurate work of historical fiction, the setting and historical details (accurate or not) make a vibrant backdrop for the book. The historical setting add interesting color to the world, even if a reader familiar with the historical time period may have to occasionally suspend disbelief. It might not have been accurate, but it had the right feeling.
The characters have some shining introductory moments but don’t shine as much beyond that. The two girl characters are very similar. They both have “I am a strong, sassy woman who doesn’t need gender roles.” I think Sarra and Rosa would have been more interesting as one character isn’t of having two characters being average. Unfortunately, there’s not that much beyond that. Giacomo was my favorite and seemed to have the most characterization. Khalid I felt like I never got to know.
Their backstories are all tragic, but they don’t do much to establish the characters and either feel like they come too late or take too much time. There wasn’t enough time to develop the characters as individuals, and by the time we get more character details, the plot seems to get in the way. We also get almost nothing about Michelangelo, and I was confused the whole time why he was bothering to help them at all. It would have been enough character development for a movie, but for a book, it never felt developed enough. The lack of character depth also took away from the found family aspect that I would have loved otherwise. Not having the motivations for why they wanted to do this particular heist for so long also made it harder to care about that plot.
The plot was exciting at some points but frustrating at others. It started slow, and sometimes, the way things were described was hard to follow. It’s unclear sometimes how the different characters are needed or how the plan was developed. Switching POV characters every chapter also made it difficult to follow the main threads of what was going on. The last part was especially difficult to follow, and I had to reread parts to understand how they did the heist in the end. Needing to backtrack to figure out what happened took away from the momentum a heist story should have.
I think this is the kind of book that would make an excellent movie but didn’t quite make the book medium work. However, it’s a fun, historical-themed heist that I don’t regret reading.
While I wouldn’t consider this a particularly accurate work of historical fiction, the setting and historical details (accurate or not) make a vibrant backdrop for the book. The historical setting add interesting color to the world, even if a reader familiar with the historical time period may have to occasionally suspend disbelief. It might not have been accurate, but it had the right feeling.
The characters have some shining introductory moments but don’t shine as much beyond that. The two girl characters are very similar. They both have “I am a strong, sassy woman who doesn’t need gender roles.” I think Sarra and Rosa would have been more interesting as one character isn’t of having two characters being average. Unfortunately, there’s not that much beyond that. Giacomo was my favorite and seemed to have the most characterization. Khalid I felt like I never got to know.
Their backstories are all tragic, but they don’t do much to establish the characters and either feel like they come too late or take too much time. There wasn’t enough time to develop the characters as individuals, and by the time we get more character details, the plot seems to get in the way. We also get almost nothing about Michelangelo, and I was confused the whole time why he was bothering to help them at all. It would have been enough character development for a movie, but for a book, it never felt developed enough. The lack of character depth also took away from the found family aspect that I would have loved otherwise. Not having the motivations for why they wanted to do this particular heist for so long also made it harder to care about that plot.
The plot was exciting at some points but frustrating at others. It started slow, and sometimes, the way things were described was hard to follow. It’s unclear sometimes how the different characters are needed or how the plan was developed. Switching POV characters every chapter also made it difficult to follow the main threads of what was going on. The last part was especially difficult to follow, and I had to reread parts to understand how they did the heist in the end. Needing to backtrack to figure out what happened took away from the momentum a heist story should have.
I think this is the kind of book that would make an excellent movie but didn’t quite make the book medium work. However, it’s a fun, historical-themed heist that I don’t regret reading.