On par with The Inheritance Games series by Jennifer Lynn Barnes, Thieves’ Gambit by Kayvion Lewis is a thrilling page-turner with all the ingredients of a good spy novel. Although Rosalyn (Ross) Quest is only seventeen years old, she is a master thief, having acquired her experience through her family-run business of thieving. Living on the remote island of the Bahamas, Ross seeks social contact with people beyond her family. In fact, she seeks escape. While the heists provide their own brand of exhilaration, Ross feels isolated. She sees her options as staying locked up in the family industry where trusting people outside the family is out of the question or giving up the life and making normal friends.
On one last heist before her planned escape, Ross miscalculates and her mother becomes a kidnap victim. Plagued by guilt and convinced her mother’s capture is her fault, Ross decides to enter the Thieves’ Gambit, a cutthroat thieving competition that awards the winner one wish, a wish that she hopes will save her mother’s life. But first, Ross has to win.
While playing the game with its various phases, Ross meets several other talented thieves, one of whom is Devroe Kenzie from England; another is her childhood nemesis, Noelia Boschert from Switzerland. The competition—with all its challenges and near-death moments—turns Ross into a hypervigilant super thief. Even though trust is not in the cards for someone of her profession who believes the motto “befriend and betray,” Ross gradually lets down her guard with members of her team. Soon she has to ask herself whether she is playing to win or whether friendship, love, or leverage will motivate her decisions.
Down to the last play of the game, the book is filled with cons, clever escapes, and surprises galore! It also reminds the reader of the adrenaline rush that derives from danger and how the enthralling, single-mindedness of peril provides its own type of high.
- Posted by Donna