Review: Heist Society by Ally Carter

When Katarina Bishop was three, her parents took her on a trip to the Louvre…to case it. For her seventh birthday, Katarina and her Uncle Eddie traveled to Austria…to steal the crown jewels. When Kat turned fifteen, she planned a con of her own—scamming her way into the best boarding school in the country, determined to leave the family business behind. Unfortunately, leaving “the life” for a normal life proves harder than she’d expected.

Soon, Kat's friend and former co-conspirator, Hale, appears out of nowhere to bring Kat back into the world she tried so hard to escape. But he has a good reason: a powerful mobster has been robbed of his priceless art collection and wants to retrieve it. Only a master thief could have pulled this job, and Kat's father isn't just on the suspect list, he is the list. Caught between Interpol and a far more deadly enemy, Kat’s dad needs her help.

For Kat, there is only one solution: track down the paintings and steal them back. So what if it's a spectacularly impossible job? She's got two weeks, a teenage crew, and hopefully just enough talent to pull off the biggest heist in her family's history--and, with any luck, steal her life back along the way.

After a bunch of recommendations and a burst of motivation, I finally took this book out from the library and read it...  And I simply ADORED it. I loved Ally Carter's Gallagher Girls Series and I liked this one even more. There was a lot of awesome in it. The concept was definitely interesting. Criminals against criminals? Sure why not. I've heard of that before. It's a similar  but different concept from the spies in the Gallagher Girls Series. Yet Carter still found a way to keep it interesting. I read it in one sitting(then again, it was in a car on a short road trip so... that might be why). But it was definitely pretty good.

I found the writing simple and to the point, which I liked. It seemed a little more complex than the Gallagher Girls Series(I seem to be comparing it a lot...). But perhaps that's simply because Ally Carter's writing style has developed. But whatever happened, I definitely liked this a lot better than that series. There was just enough action and description to keep it fast-paced and interesting. There wasn't really any unnecessary events or information which kept the story really focused but at the same time, it was suspenseful and unpredictable(for the most part).

The ending was great as well. Not the sloppy cliffhanger that I was half expecting(because they seem to be all over the place in YA books lately). Everything was fully finalized and cleared up. A well done dénouement right there.

I do have to mention, however, that there is a bit of a love triangle, which I know a lot of people, including myself, have gotten just plain sick of. It's only slightly mentioned on the side but it's there. I found it okay this time for once. Maybe because it wasn't the focus of the book and they didn't all act stupid about it. Anyhow, whatever Ally Carter did, I was not at all upset that there was that bit of love triangle. It worked.

Overall, I'd give this a 5/5. For a quick, action-packed yet simple read, I definitely recommend Heist Society.