Review: Heist Society (Heist Society, #1)

Author: Ally Carter
Publication date: September 1st 2011
Publisher: Orchard Books
Paperback, 332 pages
My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I love tales about thieves and con artists, book series like The Curse Workers and movies like Ocean’s Eleven. I love it when seemingly random events come together neatly and cleverly in the end. Therefore, I loved Heist Society. It is admittedly not as clever as White Cat, for example, but I had a hard time putting it down and that’s a big deal these days.

Fifteen-year-old Katarina Bishop is a very experienced con artist. She may be ridiculously young, but in her line of work, she’s one of the best. Descended from a long line of skilled con men and educated by her own father, Kat knows every trick in the book. But the kind of life she’s been leading for as long as she can remember can be very tiresome so she’s decided to try something different – get a proper education.
At the beginning of Heist Society, Kat is being expelled from a very prestigious boarding school she’d conned her way into. Her best friend and fellow con artist, W.W. Hale the Fifth, set her up and had her expelled, all because her father’s in trouble and needs help. Someone has stolen five absurdly expensive paintings from Arturo Taccone, a very rich and unscrupulous man who is convinced that Kat’s dad is responsible and is ready to do anything at all to get them back. He doesn’t care that her father has an alibi and that he’s being watched by the Interpol. He just wants his property back, and to give it back to him, Kat and her friends have to steal them from a place no one has ever broken into – the Henley museum in London.

I’m not sure why I waited so long to read Heist Society – it’s exactly the kind of book I usually can’t resist – light, fast and utterly unputdownable. Once I started thinking about flaws, I realized it is also a bit too short. There was room for a few more plot twists, and although I’m not normally a fan of watered down plots, I did feel that things were happening far too fast.

The characters were all interesting, colorful and full of quirks. I loved getting to know them and figuring them out, enjoyed trying to understand their motives and loyalties. Although Kat is the main character, I feel that I’ve learned more about the others than I did about her, but some things were made clearer towards the end and I can’t wait to discover more in Uncommon Criminals. Although there are two gorgeous boys in Kat’s world, Heist Society is really romance-free. There are hints of a relationship and some scenes did feel a bit love triangle-ish, but it is quite clear who Kat belongs with, and I’m pretty confident that’s who she’ll end up with.

To make the long story short (*gasp* Yes, I do that occasionally!), I highly recommend this book to anyone looking for a quick summer read.