Review: Heist Society

Details:
Title: Heist Society (Heist Society #1)
Author: Ally Carter
Publisher: Disney/Hyperion
Pub Date: February 2010
Genre: Contemporary Fiction, Crime

When Katarina Bishop was three, her parents took her 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 her back into the world she tried so hard to escape. But he has good reason: a powerful mobster's art collection has been stolen, and he wants it returned. 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 (very crooked) history—and, with any luck, steal her life back along the way. -- Goodreads

My Thoughts:
Ally Carter's books have been on my to-read list for a while, but I just hadn't gotten around to reading them for whatever reason, but I should've read them sooner. Heist Society was a fun, exciting light crime novel.

I really like Kat and her whole family of criminals; everyone's a thief, but you can still relate to them and picture them as regular people who just happen to steal precious art. The whole crime family dynamic was great -- it was fun high risk, not Godfather killing people scary high risk. Although Kat's father is in danger and she's dealing with an evil criminal, the book stay's light and fun (which was perfect for me). I generally don't read crime novels or watch thrillers because they're too much for me. I like my crime light and fun like Heist Society. Not to say that Heist Society didn't have edge-of-your-seat-page-turner moments, because it did and you worry about Kat being able to really pull off the heist.

The plot itself was a bit different from what I was expecting. I assumed the book would be about a girl who's part of an art-stealing-family who has to steal a few paintings to help her father, but there's a whole lot more than that going on. Kat and her teenage friends and family members are the ones trying to figure out how to get her father out of trouble. And Kat herself is struggling with her criminal past and trying to figure out if she even wants to be a part of the family.

Although the book has nothing to do with summer, it was the perfect summer reading opener for me. Exciting, light, and full of art (I studied art in undergrad). And lucky for me I had Uncommon Criminals sitting on my bookshelf, so I could jump right into Kat's next adventure.

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