I'm really enjoying the intersection of multiple worlds in this book, combining historical Chinese artifacts, ambitious Chinese American college students, a powerful tech conglomerate, and a heist to take back what was stolen. This story has similarities to Ocean's 11, and the movie is referenced more than once.

I really appreciate the well-developed and variegated characters, using stereotypes sparingly but also relatable to the Chinese diaspora. The purpose of the heist is to retrieve the bronze zodiac statues from the Old Summer Palace that rightfully belong to the Chinese people. Even though the main characters in this book are of Chinese origin, China is not always painted in a positive light. The problematic government and past transgressions are not overlooked, but a different perspective is offered.

The writing style is more technical, giving scenic descriptions in sentence fragments, and it can feel disjointed. At times, the dialogue can be hard to follow because of the large chunks of internal musings inserted between responses. But for a debut book, this one was spectacular. It was unpredictable and the ending was very satisfying.

I really enjoy the Oceans movies as well as the movie 21 and to me this sounded like it had elements of those films. After reading it, I would definitely still say it does, but it wasn't as fun or imaginative as Oceans for sure. However, there is a deeper story and significance here that goes beyond the showy glitz and glam of an Oceans movie. That story of ownership and ultimately writes our stories wins the day in the end, and the ending is strong. That said, I was left wanting more for much of the novel leading up to that and didn't really connect with the writing style. I was still able to finish it rather quickly and as I said, felt like I was rewarded in the end, so I definitely would not trash it. I do think there could have been more here though.

Portrait of a Thief is a thinking individual's heist tale. The perfect book for anyone who's ever wanted their heist book or film to come with a few less improbable explosions, this character driven tale lures you in with the promise of grand thefts and then delivers an emotional reflection on the whys of art theft, museums, and life as a young adult. Will, a charismatic Chinese American college student is sitting on the cusp of graduation when the museum he works at is robbed. In the chaos of the robbery, Will slips a small figurine into his pocket, attracting the attention of the thieves, who work for a Beijing corporation that's funding the return of Chinese art and artifacts to the country through not strictly legal means. When offered the chance of a lifetime: steal 5 fountainheads belonging to the Old Summer Palace, currently held in some of the largest museums in the world for a cool ten million dollars, Will forms a team of other Chinese American college students: new citizen and medical student Daniel who's grieving the loss of his mother and his native country, unhappy Silicon Valley worker and MIT drop out Alex, engineering student and late night drag racer Lily, and Will's perfect, always poised sister Irene. The five set out with a nearly impossible task, navigating security systems, foreign customs, and being caught between two worlds, that of their Chinese parents, a world shrouded in tradition, obligation, and sometimes pain, and that of the American college student, a moment in time when life stretches on into the future, uncertain and unknowable in the wake of the pandemic.

This book is gripping at points, full of twists and turns, but the core of novel rests on the emotional journeys the characters are on, choosing what kind of lives they want to lead and navigating the past and the future to get there. I spent so much time wondering how this would resolve, but the ending too me by surprise, a satisfying conclusion to the story.

This book was provided by Net Galley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions expressed are my own.

First of all, thank you to PENGUIN GROUP Dutton and NetGalley for this ARC! This review is voluntarily written by me.

In my opinion, this book revolves around the crime, the motive of the crime, how they do it, and why each of the team members wants to do the series of the heist. From my understanding, the novel looks like it has two main focuses, things that are related to the heists themselves (such as the planning, the execution) and the members themselves (like their life stories, how they are dealing with the heists). The novel is told from the view of all five members of the team, making readers can understand more about each of the characters. Overall, the story is nice but gets draggy at certain points maybe because of the explanation of the characters or scenes. For the main characters (heist members), I do not have any favourites may be because of their characterization, I do not really think they are really compatible with me. However, I still like some of their life stories. I give this novel a quite high rating because it gets me thinking, who is the real thief? The thief that stole the artifacts of their culture (which should be kept in their own country/places), or, the ones that colonized places, took their valuables, and then, displayed them in name of knowledge and cultural preservation? Who is the real thief? Both parties or only one of them?

This reminded me of the movie '21' but with an art heist instead of card counting. This never settled into a genre, which would be ok, but it felt very disjointed - at parts it was an intense character study about the group and other times it was very suspenseful. It was fun and unique debut.

Thanks to NetGalley and publisher for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

I have heard a lot recently about the repatriation of art stolen during colonization or war. This story uses that rationale to support the stealing back of several Chinese artifacts held in various museums around the world. All that I love! And, once I was able to differentiate between the characters, I loved them too! Each one dealing with their status as Chinese Americans and all the pressures placed on them by the world, their families, and themselves. The only struggle I had was their ability to get away with the thefts. In that it felt a bit more Keystone Cops than Oceans Eleven. A great action packed story with interesting characters!

This book was pretty good. From the beginning I had an easy time getting into it and I liked how the characters were written. Some points were not my favorite and I got bored for some parts because of that but I would still recommend this book to most people because it is enjoyable and the story itself is really fun.

NetGalley and Tiny Reparations Books provided an advanced copy in return for an honest review. Unfortunately, I DNF'ed this book at 50%.
I had a tough time dealing with the characters—they had really long chapters, which is okay, although there are five major characters, and they all had their own distinct chapters, and it started feeling like it changed gears a lot. I would have loved fewer characters or less POV chapters in general, with a concentrate on 1-3 individuals.
The story and concept are fantastic, but I couldn't get past the multiple POV chapters and tone switches.

This was just not the book for me. It was slower than I expected, and I was not invested in the story.

I received a free electronic advanced reader copy (ARC) of this book from the publisher through Netgalley in return for my honest review:

Portrait of a Thief is the story of five Chinese-American young people who agree to steal a set of five Chinese artifacts from western museums to return them to China.

Pros:
The five characters are well developed and have different reasons for wanting to participate in the heist. They also have different nuanced feelings about their identities as Chinese-Americans, which makes the story richer. While touching on topics of colonial history and art theft, this book does not paint America as "bad" and china as "good" or as a wholesale victim, for me this made the story more complex and realistic. Many of the characters participate in the heist for personal more than moral reasons- to make a name for themselves, to feel like they've done something, for the thrill, because they love their family because they need to rebel, etc.

The characters are all also awesome in their own ways. It's super fun to read about competent smart people doing smart cool things. A pleasure. Esp Irene-- can we get a book about our perfect sapphic queeeeeen?


Cons:
This book starts slow and stays slow. I picked the book up and put it down several times before I finally got even 25% through, which is very abnormal for me. I expected this heist novel to be something like a thriller, fun and fast-paced. But the thefts each happen in two or three pages, and the rest of the novel focuses on the characters' internal lives and interpersonal dramas. It's also more melancholy than I expected-- Several times characters refer to things as "feeling like a dream" or "dreamlike;" they all approach their own lives with a certain distance, nostalgia, and melancholy that makes the whole book feel distant to me as a reader. It was not as immediate and vivid as I would have liked. I think for some, this melancholy and poetic vibe will be their jam but it was not mine.

I received an ARC from the publisher and am voluntarily posting a review. All opinions are my own.
Portrait of a Thief is a promising debut novel. The concept of an art heist, but with the twist of fighting back against colonialism and reclaiming one’s lost cultural heritage. Conceptually, it’s awesome, and while I wasn’t fully in love with it, there are some really solid highs.
The five characters are very much a ragtag team, being put together by a Chinese corporation. They’re all gifted students, although none of them are experienced in thievery. I did enjoy getting a sense of their connections to their heritages, as each of them has a different relationship with being Chinese, depending on how aware they are of their immigrant parents’ experience. And there’s this battle between Chinese and American, with the products of diaspora being divided between the two cultures.
Ultimately, it feels very character focused, as we dig into how each of these characters is impacted by their cultural identity and the legacy of colonialism. That does at times feel like it runs contrary to the branding of the book. There’s a lot of emotional depth here, and while the aspects to which it relates are highlighted in the blurb, the focus on the heist is what had me feeling a bit misled. It had a lot of potential to be fun, especially given the fact that these kids have never done anything like this before. Ultimately, the book did not deliver on that. It tries to be a thriller, but there are no thrills; it’s pretty much a contemporary with the heist slotted in for the sake of a framing device to bring the characters together and give them something to do at the end. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing, but given what the book has been comped to, I had a very different idea in my mind.
While this book didn’t entirely deliver, I do respect what it was trying to do. If you go into this book with the right expectations, a deep exploration of Chinese-American identity, with a side of heist, you might enjoy this.

Reminiscent of Bringing Down the House and Ocean's Eleven, this is unlike any heist novel I've ever read. And I think that's due to it being a character-motivated book, with 5 conflicting personalities and dynamics. The idea of a group reclaiming stolen art for its country of origin is noble, with the 50 million dollar prize a mere afterthought. The chapters are short, keeping it highly readable despite being a 400 page book. As the thrill of the heists wears off and they're pursued by the FBI, we finally get conflict between the characters (with a few unrealistic reactions). I loved the idea of this book, though at times I was questioning if college students could really pull this off. Overall an interesting topic at a fast clip that I'd recommend to art lovers one and all.

*Thank you to Dutton and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for my honest review*

Sadly DNF'ing this highly anticipated book (for now!) at 20%. For the record, I do not believe this is the fault of the book- I think I'm just too stupid and brain foggy right now to figure out what the heck is going on, As someone who spent two years living with museologists, this book is extremely important and timely, and I am very excited to give this another go when I can actually think again. I got some Leverage vibes, some Oceans 11 vibes, but definitely more literary-focused than I thought it was going to be. Will still definitely be ordering a copy and recommending it to our readers.

Loved the synopsis and pre-ordered the book in January! And although I loved the characters and their ties to one another, the storyline didn't hold up as well as I expected. From the way they communicated to their inexperienced made the heist very unbelievable. Which was a huge let down after getting so excited for this read.

Looking forward to Grace D. Li's next novel! Thank you NetGalley and Tiny Reparations Books for the arc. I am very appreciative to have read anout these character's stories.

I really enjoyed this book! The characters kind of make the book for me, and I love their mission to reclaim Chinese art from Western museums! It was described as Ocean's 11 meets The Farewell, but I think that description made me expect a different kind of book. Instead of expert thieves pulling off a well-plotted heist, this is really a bunch of amateur thieves who pull their mission off more by luck.

Will Chen is just an ordinary art history student. He keeps his head down, thinks about his future, and wishes he could do more than just admire the works of other artists, and often the stolen works of other artists. All around him, museums boast art pieces that don’t belong to them, that were taken as spoils of war, as rights of conquest, or just smuggled illegally. One day, while in his local museum, Will runs into a group who’s stealing all the Chinese art back. As they leave, they slip a note in his pocket.

Will now has the opportunity of a lifetime. If he and the rest of his team manage to bring some valuable pieces of Chinese history back where they belong, not only will they be heroes, but they’ll have a nice cash prize at the end of it. There’s just one small problem, though. They have to rob five museums, and they have no idea how to do it.

I received an advanced reading copy of Portrait of a Thief in exchange for an honest review.

Portrait of a Thief is a novel by Grace D. Li. It features five college-age people who embark on the wildest adventure they ever could have imagined, but one that helps them feel alive.

Portrait of a Thief is a heist book, but the book isn’t about that. Sure, the plot has several heists, lots of planning and stealth, but the story is about something completely different. The story is that of what it’s like to be part of the diaspora, of seeing history literally stolen by colonizers, and of struggling to find where one belongs rather than where one thinks they should belong.

In this book, we have five main POV characters: Will, Irene, Daniel, Lily, and Alex. They’re the leader, the con artist, the thief, the getaway driver, and the hacker respectively. This is Ocean’s Eleven but in a book! And it gets very exciting at times! However, you know me. I’m a lover of character, and I have to say I loved just how different each of these characters were from the others, and how distinct their motivations were. When writing multi-POV novels, it’s easy to fall into certain traps, but Li skillfully navigated around those and delivered five well-rounded characters, each of which I loved and rooted for throughout the book.

And it’s really through these characters that the story comes alive, rather than the plot. We get to see more than them trying to plan this heist, but through seeing them in interactions with each other, or even small snippets of their lives, we get to really understand them, know what makes them tick, and how they actually feel about all this. Is this heist something they feel they’ve been destined to do, or are they just hoping for an escape?

Family pressures, the need to belong, and wanting to connect to a part of their family history are such big parts of this book, and I know I’ve brought them up several times, but I just really loved how Li was able to deliver such a deep story through such an exciting premise!

I really enjoyed this book. It had a great balance of character moments with exciting action sequences. There were fun twists, and moments that made me groan out loud. I honestly read this book as if I was watching it on a TV screen. I really hope it gets an adaptation, actually, because I think it could really be something special.

I would recommend this book to anybody who enjoys heist stories, or any of the Ocean’s franchise. I have to admit, I don’t watch a ton of heist movies, but I do think that this book delivers on its premise, and will leave those movie fans satisfied.

Portrait of a Thief will be released on April 5. You can pre-order your copy from Tiny Reparations Books here.

Diving into a dark world with many secrets. This story kept me on the edge of my seat and trying to figure out the ending throughout the entire book.

Thanks to NetGalley & Tiny Reparations Books for the early copy in exchange for an honest review. Sadly, I DNF'ed this book at 20%.

I had a really hard time keeping up with the characters--they had very long chapters which is good and all but there's five main characters and they all got their own individual chapters and it felt like it changed gears so much. I would've preferred either less characters or just less POV chapters in general and focus on 2-3 characters...

It also didn't help that it felt like most of the characters were self-centered jerkwads and I don't tend to like to read that too much, ha.

The plot and premise are excellent, I just couldn't get past the constant POV chapters and shifts in tone.

Portrait of a Thief by Grace D. Li is the story of 5 college students who come together to steal back what is rightfully "theirs" - Chinese Art sitting in museums across the world that challenges what is legal when it comes to colonized art. The students in question are by no means prepared for the mission- their research consists of watching Oceans 11.

Will, the ringleader, is in his senior year at Harvard and your typical picture perfect Chinese-American young man. Irene, Will's younger sister, is in her Junior year at Duke with enough charm to get away with anything that she wants. Lily, Irene's roommate, has a passion for racing cars and never losing. Daniel, Will's childhood neighbor, is a premed student who feels a lot of pressure to deliver on his parents' expectations of him. And Alex, a girl who went on a couple of dates with Will, dropped out of MIT to work in Software in the Silicon Valley to provide for her family but is quickly realizing that this may not be the best way.

While I really enjoyed pieces of this book I want to be clear that this is not the heist drama you may be expecting based off of the description. There is very little time dedicated to the actual logistics or planning of these missions and in order to enjoy the story you will have to suspend all belief. I mean, there is just no way that you can bring a stolen Chinese statue through airport security and get away with it when the break-in is being publicized all over the news? It just doesn't add up. The good news is that the story isn't really about that anyways.

Portrait of a Thief explores what it means to belong to two cultures and what it means to honor that. How do you respect your roots and grow branches of your own? It was a touching story about the Chinese-American experience and the best part was the relationships explored within, between the members of the crew and their families. It made me smile and as an immigrant myself I felt a connection to the experience of these 5.

Thank you to Netgalley and Tiny Reparations Books for the ARC - Portrait of a Thief is out 4/5/22.

A con Artist - Irene.
A thief - Daniel.
A hacker - Alex.
A getaway driver - Lily
The mastermind - Will

An illegal job offer - $50 million!

A heist novel inspired by the true story of Chinese art vanishing from western museums. Portrait of a Thief explores what it means to be a Chinese American in a country that will always ask "Where are you from?" I would of enjoyed a little of the heist details in the novel to enliven the steals.

Thank you PENGUIN GROUP Dutton, Tiny Reparations Books for the advance reader copy.