A review by malulu
Thieves' Gambit by Kayvion Lewis

2.0

My initial thought before reading this was that this would work better as a movie. After reading it, I still think the same. It is hard to capture the essence of action in a book and this being targeted at young adults, it didn't do it any favors.

I really wanted to like this, but when you have a premise with thieves and secrets and action, you really expect something... unexpected! And this had nothing new going for it. It started pretty nicely with a few tips and tricks for thieves and I would love for this to continue, but instead of that, we got a lot of teenage drama, romance that made little sense, frenemies that are being so cheesy and not a lot of action actually. If it at least focused more on how peculiar such an upbringing was psychologically instead of the obvious tidbits, it would have worked more. Alas we got very obvious twists and very boring repeats of "I broke our only rule; Never trust anyone. It won't happen again!"

This mostly resembles a story that someone thought up how thieves should work, but does not have much idea behind it other than movies. Then again, I'm no master thief, so who knows? All I know is that for the most part it felt close to something good and deeper, but it only ended up as average teenage drama but with higher stakes and a pretty boring ending, because really? Archenemies?

I would still watch it if it was a movie though. Seems like it would be fun 1.5 hours.