Three star review, originally posted here on September 3rd, 2024.
I got this book from the airport convenience store. It was the only book win the slim selection that seemed even remotely appealing, and I was basically just looking for a light fun beach read, so my standards and expectations were low. As I started reading, though, I got excited. This book has a lot of promise. The premise, for one, is fantastic. Right up my alley! Clever Victorian servants with ties to a seedy female-lead criminal underbelly, pulling off an elaborate heist? Sounds fantastic! The beginning was just fun. We got several chapters of the fun Team Assembly Montage where the Danny Ocean character gets the gang back together, etc. Hay had us asking plenty of questions, and I was eagerly, hungrily lapping up the book in anticipation of the answers. Why this house in particular? Why now? Who are these people? What are we looking for? How is this plan going to work? Why and how did they come up with it? Etc.
The problem, though, is that as we start getting into the heist itself, I started getting let down. I think the biggest disappointments came from the heist itself. Early on we get hints of how perfectly worked out this super genius plan is, but when we get to the plan, it seems sloppy and half-formed. Our crack team supposedly consists of 7 women with equal shares, but… then we bring in an actual team of what seemed to be literally hundreds of people. The 7 women weren’t dividing the work remotely evenly, and I still don’t understand what the hell one of them was supposed to be doing or why she got one seventh while the hundreds of actors and robbers got, presumably, significantly less. The toughest logistics have to be handled by one of the recruited women, who just so happens to already have an well-oiled crime network in place to fleece things, but we don’t really have any idea of why this lady has this shit in place already or how she’s doing it. There are literally thousands of people who would know this heist was happening, and yet nobody gets caught? (spoiler alert, but… whatever.) And the entire plan circles around moving hundreds of party guests around in a way they nobody ever bothers to wander into the wrong room or garden at the wrong time, which is, frankly, impossible.
Once we got to the heist itself, there was still a lot of book left, and I figured we’d be focusing on the elaborate robbery itself. Instead, we kept going off onto personal subplots that just dragged too long, but also were half-formed. I had trouble understanding character motivations and actions. The robbery victim, for example… I couldn’t tell if we were supposed to like her or hate her or what. I couldn’t tell if we’re supposed to be getting vengeance on her for something, or if she’s just collateral damage. There’s a very half-assed love interest thrown into the mix that adds literally nothing to the plot. Our Danny Ocean character makes some weird choices at the very end just I just don’t understand. I dunno, the whole thing just kinda meanders and peters out.
That being said, it was still a fun concept, and I enjoyed trying to immerse myself in this world to the extent that I could manage to suspend my disbelief. So, a nice neutral 3 stars for a mostly fun but far from perfect read.
Helga without the H 