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A review by latad_books
The Steal by M.J. Rose, C.W. Gortner
3.0
I was immediately interested in this book because its cover evoked some of the books I read in high school by Mary Stewart and Phyllis A. Whitney.
The story setting is glamourous, with a daring heist of several pieces of high-end jewelry intended for various actors to wear at the Cannes film festival in 1950. The two leads have much to lose if they fail to recover the stolen jewels. Insurance Investigator Jerome Curtis is off balance when he meets cool and tough jewelry designer and CEO of her company, Anya Thorne. They race around from Cannes to Paris to New York City, chasing leads and getting to know each other.
The two authors switch PoV between the two characters, so that we can learn a little of their histories, so we learn about Anya's relationship with her somewhat mercurial father and founder of the jewelry company, and we also learn a little about Jerome's activities immediately following the war.
I was not particularly enamoured by Jerome's constant pointing out Anya's "alabaster" skin or icy beauty. This got old really fast. I am so tired of hearing how having alabaster skin automatically makes someone seem so beautiful.
Also, this book doesn't have the snappy pace both Stewart or Whitney were great at writing, even though the plot still moves reasonably well. I say this because though this was a pretty short book, it took me much longer to get through it than I expected.
So, this this was diverting, but not as much as I had hoped.
Thank you to Netgalley and the Publisher for this ARC in exchange for a review.
The story setting is glamourous, with a daring heist of several pieces of high-end jewelry intended for various actors to wear at the Cannes film festival in 1950. The two leads have much to lose if they fail to recover the stolen jewels. Insurance Investigator Jerome Curtis is off balance when he meets cool and tough jewelry designer and CEO of her company, Anya Thorne. They race around from Cannes to Paris to New York City, chasing leads and getting to know each other.
The two authors switch PoV between the two characters, so that we can learn a little of their histories, so we learn about Anya's relationship with her somewhat mercurial father and founder of the jewelry company, and we also learn a little about Jerome's activities immediately following the war.
I was not particularly enamoured by Jerome's constant pointing out Anya's "alabaster" skin or icy beauty. This got old really fast. I am so tired of hearing how having alabaster skin automatically makes someone seem so beautiful.
Also, this book doesn't have the snappy pace both Stewart or Whitney were great at writing, even though the plot still moves reasonably well. I say this because though this was a pretty short book, it took me much longer to get through it than I expected.
So, this this was diverting, but not as much as I had hoped.
Thank you to Netgalley and the Publisher for this ARC in exchange for a review.