Thieves' Gambit by Kayvion Lewis

The Inheritance Games meets Ocean's Eleven in this cinematic heist thriller where a cutthroat competition brings together the world's best thieves and one thief is playing for the highest stakes of all: her mother's life.

At only seventeen years old, Ross Quest is already a master thief, especially adept at escape plans. Until her plan to run away from her legendary family of thieves takes an unexpected turn, leaving her mother's life hanging in the balance.

In a desperate bid, she enters the Thieves' Gambit, a series of dangerous, international heists where killing the competition isn't exactly off limits, but the grand prize is a wish for anything in the world—a wish that could save her mom. When she learns two of her competitors include her childhood nemesis and a handsome, smooth-talking guy who might also want to steal her heart, winning the Gambit becomes trickier than she imagined.

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Ross tries her best to stick to the family creed: trust no one whose last name isn't Quest. But with the stakes this high, Ross will have to decide who to con and who to trust before time runs out. After all, only one of them can win.

Upon finishing Thieves’ Gambit, I entirely understand why it has the hype that it does. This is a book that received a million-dollar advance across auction with multiple publishers interested; it successfully combines elements from multiple popular books while still feeling fresh, and fills a void left behind by series like Heist Society and The Inheritance Games. Personally, I just love when a book is authentically global, taking part across multiple cities across the world without each location feeling like a placeholder. These characters are genuinely familiar with spots in France, the Bahamas, Switzerland, and elsewhere, so the globe-trotting aspect is vivid and larger-than-life. I had mixed thoughts about certain choices, but overall loved the book and will recommend it widely.

A lot of it feels familiar already—arguably classic—but enough of the atmosphere and “little things” felt fresh that it’ll release with a bang.

First, I’m immensely grateful to Thieves’ Gambit for actually living up to its “for fans of” premise. If y’all read the blog regularly, you know how frustrated I was by Portrait of a Thief promising to be a heist book but then skipping over all of the logistics and promises of the genre in favor of internal conflict; I thought the stakes and the actions didn’t match, and therefore didn’t make any sense. Thieves’ Gambit, meanwhile, matches the characters’ focus with what they’re risking, so therefore feels much more satisfying. The stakes match the action. You’ll pick it up expecting a no-holds-barred global espionage thriller, and that’s what you’ll get. Many YA books take on a competition structure, but few lately have done it successfully. (Cue eyeroll towards Lightlark; sorry, I'm a hater.)

It’s very classically action-packed, so the pacing will hook even the most reluctant readers. We start with Rosalyn assisting her mother while stealing artifacts, diamonds, and the like. While curled up to hide in a piece of furniture, she clicks into an email from a gymnastics camp she’d love to go to and reflects on how she’s trapped in the family business. Ultimately, she decides to strike out on her own—but doubles back to join a “dangerous” thieves’ competition when things go awry during a job. She must win the ultimate prize, as it’s the only way to save her family.

The romance was eh and the prose was fine, but this book will be popular for its plot, which is 90 percent fabulous. I can see multiple comps throughout it that mean it will have a pretty wide variety of appeal (and for those unfamiliar with publishing, comp titles tend to be the reason a book will do really well $$-wise when acquired!) Those who love the cleverness of Rick Riordan and Jennifer Lynn Barnes’s challenges will thrive in Thieves’ Gambit. Pair the global intrigue of Heist Society with a light dash of Squid Game? Sure. When in doubt, this will be my go-to reluctant reader pick going forward. It pulls pros from a wide variety of popular media without feeling mishmashed or stale.

The competition itself pulls thieves from all corners of the world (some rivals) to compete to be a mysterious organization’s appointed thief for a year, with the winner receiving “their ultimate wish” at the end. There’s a love interest, an enemy, and an assorted other cast with unknown motivations (who did, admittedly, feel muddled at times.) The ensemble played off each other, so I loved the complexity of its dynamic.

Where Thieves’ Gambit excelled was in the cleverness of its execution. We get a challenge; it seems impossible. Rosalyn must use her wits to solve the case, even when unknown obstacles and twists are thrown her way. Reading each chapter of the game was such a joy, as it was so mentally satisfying and well thought-out up until the ending. The book succeeds on a micro level, and it also didn’t pull punches, which I appreciated. People get injured and nearly killed. There are real consequences and stakes that propel each character. The pacing reminded me of James Dashner or Ally Carter, i.e. an actual domino effect that means each chapter hinges on the previous.

Where the book struggles most—and fails to grab me—is in its internal and emotional arcs, which are so heavy-handed and telegraphed that they fail to feel authentic. You can tell exactly how carefully Lewis has placed specific statements to show the goals of each character, so each trajectory feels overly obvious throughout the book. Because of that, it feels like these conflicts are plugged into a formula rather than feeling genuine, and some of the quote-unquote betrayals are eye-rollingly obvious because they’ve been mapped out the entire time. I loved Rosalyn and how creative she was in her solutions, and readers of Jennifer Lynn Barnes will absolutely love her too, so I occasionally thought that you really had to suspend belief in order to believe that she could be so naive to something later revealed as a big twist. I also loved one character, who was there teaching himself how to be a thief; his logic and strategy were so compelling to me.

The characters were endearing, and I appreciated how intricate and complex Rosalyn’s relationship was with her mother, especially when things go awry. The familial conflict will resonant with many as she navigates questions of loyalty versus autonomy.

Let's talk about the ending, real quick: my one negative.

I didn’t enjoy the ending. I thought one of the betrayals was incredibly clear, and that Rosalyn was too smart for its convenience. She was way too quick to trust, considering the stakes of the game, which felt a little off. Similarly, I really struggled with the supposed raised stakes of the final challenge in the Gambit. On a moral level, it felt weird that the thieves’ would suddenly have such a hard time with this one challenge but not the others; honestly, it felt extremely naive of them to suddenly think this was wrong to do, but not examine the consequences of their previous actions and how they might ultimately lead to similar outcomes. So the ending felt pretty silly and superfluous to me, because you kind of all knew what you were getting into? How was this supposedly bad but not the rest?

The previous tasks were just handled so well that I thought the ending really flopped, as there was nowhere near the same level of creativity and impact. It felt like Lewis got to the end and panicked, and didn’t really know how to get from the middle to the big reveals, so some of the climax felt somewhat thrown together. In that sense, I was disappointed by how it all came together, which would normally be the kiss of death for me and a book, but I loved the middle and experience enough that I still considered this a fun, fabulously entertaining read. It’s smart despite some bumpiness, and I’m hoping the sequel will be even smoother and more capable.

Although it does feel like everything is plugged into a structure we’ve seen before and a lot of the book feels overall relatively obvious, the execution was done well enough where the book feels crisp and appealing. The macro layout of it is familiar. The middle was so good, which is where most books sag for me, so I think ultimately if you’re like me and despise the ending, you’ll still love most of the book and it will be a winner. Do I think the payoff’s there? No. But everything else is so well done that I don’t entirely care. It still annoys me a little bit, but I’m choosing not to be a brat about craft. It’s such a net-positive.

Thieves’ Gambit is a delightful, plot-heavy, and international read that will hook you from the first chapter and entertain you the whole way through. That’s all I want and need, and it’s why so many people will pick up and love this one. Definitely buy this for teens, classrooms, libraries, friends…oh, and it’s optioned for film too.