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A review by lbarsk
Portrait of a Thief by Grace D. Li
4.0
I swear to god I had already reviewed this? Anyway, absolutely devoured it, and for the most part really enjoyed — it makes total sense that the book is being turned into a TV Series because it felt very cinematic and fast-paced! Total fun heist times, with lots of cultural commentary on what it means to be Chinese versus American versus Chinese American thrown in.
The only thing that kept snagging for me, and which I couldn’t ignore when I noticed it like maybe 50 pages in, is that the voices for each character are all SO similar despite them having very divergent wants, needs, personalities, etc. that DO come out VERY clearly when they interact with each other! Li clearly has some favorite sentence structures (and who among us doesn’t!) and some favorite ways to introduce similes, and I guess I just wish that those had been varied from character-POV to character-POV.
Overall, though, a fun NA heist.
The only thing that kept snagging for me, and which I couldn’t ignore when I noticed it like maybe 50 pages in, is that the voices for each character are all SO similar despite them having very divergent wants, needs, personalities, etc. that DO come out VERY clearly when they interact with each other! Li clearly has some favorite sentence structures (and who among us doesn’t!) and some favorite ways to introduce similes, and I guess I just wish that those had been varied from character-POV to character-POV.
Overall, though, a fun NA heist.