Little Thieves Series: Little Thieves #1 Published by Henry Holt and Company (BYR) on October 19, 2021
Source: Netgalley Arc
Genres: Young Adult Fiction / Fairy Tales & Folklore / Adaptations, Young Adult Fiction / Fantasy / Dark Fantasy, Young Adult Fiction / Humorous / Black Comedy
Pages: 352
Find the Author: Website, Twitter, Goodreads, Amazon, Instagram, Tumblr
Format: Ebook Arc
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Kids' Indie Next pick for November/December!
Amazon Best Book of October 2021!
A scrappy maid must outsmart both palace nobles and Low Gods in a new YA fantasy by Margaret Owen, author of the Merciful Crow series.Once upon a time, there was a horrible girl...
Vanja Schmidt knows that no gift is freely given, not even a mother’s love—and she’s on the hook for one hell of a debt. Vanja, the adopted goddaughter of Death and Fortune, was Princess Gisele's dutiful servant up until a year ago. That was when Vanja’s otherworldly mothers demanded a terrible price for their care, and Vanja decided to steal her future back... by stealing Gisele’s life for herself.
The real Gisele is left a penniless nobody while Vanja uses an enchanted string of pearls to take her place. Now, Vanja leads a lonely but lucrative double life as princess and jewel thief, charming nobility while emptying their coffers to fund her great escape. Then, one heist away from freedom, Vanja crosses the wrong god and is cursed to an untimely end: turning into jewels, stone by stone, for her greed.
Vanja has just two weeks to figure out how to break her curse and make her getaway. And with a feral guardian half-god, Gisele’s sinister fiancé, and an overeager junior detective on Vanja’s tail, she’ll have to pull the biggest grift yet to save her own life.
Margaret Owen, author of The Merciful Crow series, crafts a delightfully irreverent retelling of “The Goose Girl” about stolen lives, thorny truths, and the wicked girls at the heart of both.
Review
Little thieves is a retelling of goose girl with some very dark elements. Little thieves focus on Vanja, the maid who takes over princess Giselle’s life. She is greedy and uses her newfound status to steal and hopefully fund her way to live on her own, far from her godparents, the Gods Fortune and Death. An overdone theme throughout this book is if you ask for help, it will be given in your time of need. Vanja is as stubborn and stubborn as can be on this, and each time her Godparents arrive to save the day, she firmly puts her foot down and says no, course they have given her the ultimatum that whichever Gods she asks for help first, she must serve the rest of her days. Due to her greed, she ends up being cursed by another God to have jewels grow on her body, which tells her to make amends for her wrongdoings. It takes the entire length of the book for Vanja to figure out how to do this, and while doing so, she unearths some very interesting demons and helpers. This retelling relies on you knowing the looser details of the goose girl story, especially helpful if you read another goose girl retelling Thorn by Intisar Kanani. Overall I think the author was creative with her version of the tale, the pacing in places seems drawn out, and the ending leaves me unsure where the series is going.
About margaret owen
Margaret Owen was born and raised at the end of the Oregon Trail, and now lives and writes in Seattle while negotiating a long-term hostage situation with her two monstrous cats. In her free time, she enjoys exploring ill-advised travel destinations and raising money for social justice nonprofits through her illustrations.
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