A review by slc333
Thief by C.L. Stone

3.0

Firstly I got this as a free ebook and it has been sitting in my TBR pile for well over a year because at the same time I got this one I picked up the first book in this author’s other Academy series – Ghost Bird. And while I read a few books in that series by the time I got to book 4 I was so annoyed by how stupid Sang was, how all the boys treated her like a brainless doll and she let them, how secretive they were about the stupid Academy, how all 25 (ok slight exaggeration I think the actual number was 9) boys were in love with her and agreed to share her that I couldn’t bring myself to read the Thief because I expected it to be more of the same. And while it has many of the same elements as GB for some reason I quite enjoyed this one. Possibly because while Kayli made a lot of questionable choices [getting into a car then going to an apartment with a bunch of strange boys, sitting around in her underwear and sleeping in the same bed as four or 5 guys that she has only just met etc) she didn’t come across as a brainless doll. Aside from the aforementioned poor choices she was smarter than Sang, in fact she figured out a good portion of what was going on within a couple of hours of meeting them. I liked her relationship with her brother Wil and how she was street smart and sarcastic. It does suffer from the same things that annoyed me in the other series – namely that a bunch of super hot boys all fall for Kayli and Kayli seems have romantic feelings for at least three of them (four if you count potential villain Blake). But at least three is a more manageable number than 9, although I suspect that over the next couple of books she will have developed relationships with all of them except Kevin (who has a serious girlfriend). And I thought that two of the boys she was kissing (and sleeping in beds sans sex) with were odd choices given she doesn’t really spend any time with them – Brandon and Marc and the time she spent with Brandon basically consists of a judgmental lecture about her thieving. I could buy she would have feelings for both Corey & Raven as she interacts & connects with both of them. I was also really annoyed with how she just disappeared on Wil without insisting on seeing or speaking to him – that did not seem at all consistent with the strong & protective relationship that we saw in the first few chapters. I do want to read the next one to find out what happened to Wil and whether Blake will make another reappearance but will do so cautiously given the likelihood (based on my experience with the GB series) that the remaining members of the team will fall like dominoes to Kayli’s charms.