4 stars

Heist stories are evergreen for a reason - there is just something so delicious about watching a team of exciting people come together to steal some priceless objects. Grace D. Li takes that essential framework and breathes new life into it, combining aspects of the thriller and literary fiction genres to tell the story of five Chinese-American college students tasked with stealing back five priceless sculptures from the Western museums that have put the looted art on display.

It's an absolutely fantastic set-up for a debut that delivers on multiple fronts. On every page, you can see just how much this topic means to Li and how much care was taken in crafting this story. She does a great job in capturing how these five individuals are drifting between childhood and adulthood, between China and America, between doing what is expected and doing what they love. The heist, while obviously a major factor of the story, is presented more as a means to service this introspective reflection.

My only gripe is that the language got a bit too repetitive, particularly in both the more flowery prose and in the exposition. I don't need to be told multiple times that a character is from Galveston, I got it the first two times it was established. It's one of my biggest pet peeves and while it made me sad that it happened fairly frequently in here, I recognize that it is a fairly minor sin in the grand scheme of things. This is a great debut by Li and I look forward to seeing her put out more work in the future!

Thank you to NetGalley and Tiny Reparations Books for an ARC of this book in exchange for a fair and honest review!

3.5 stars
I did enjoy this book but it's not really as advertised. The blurb going around says Oceans Eleven meets The Farewell and while it does have a twisty fakeout ending that is kind of similar to Oceans Eleven the heist parts are only a minimal part of the book. Again I did really enjoy this book and the characters but I think comparing it to a Hollywood heist film is oversimplifying it because the book is more complex than that. The book deals with some heavy and interesting themes of acceptance, immigration, the Chinese diaspora, what you owe yourselves and your community. I'm not Chinese and am only marginally the child of immigrants so I can't speak to these themes with any authority. I think the author did a good job tackling everything I listed above (and more themes I'm sure I left out). The characters were also multi-faceted, interesting and really drove the story forward.

There is Will, the mastermind behind everything who is actually mostly a dumb young adult. Irene his smart, fast-talking sister, who is so mean (I love a mean character!) and so perfect but maybe not perfect enough. Alex, an MIT dropout who seems like the perfect Asian hacker stereotype but is actually kinda terrible at hacking. Alex is also sort of mean and she and Irene hate each other (hmmm). Lily, the only one who doesn't speak Chinese and is also their getaway driver so talented she wins them a car! Daniel, who is a pre-med student but doesn't feel good enough for his father in law enforcement which further complicates their relationship as Daniel is a masterful thief. I will honestly miss all these characters now that I'm done with the book but all I can say is please go read it.

I was provided a free copy of this book through NetGalley.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with an arc!

Portrait of a Thief was my most anticipated release of the year and when I got the notification I'd been approved for an arc I literally had to stop and stare for a moment. The story follows a crew of five young Chinese Americans who are roped into heisting back artifacts looted from China by the West. The crew grapples with the weight of their identities, futures, and loyalties in a spellbinding debut.

As a Chinese American college student who saw some facet of herself reflected in all of the characters' stories, this book hit me hard. Grace Li manages to deal with themes of diaspora and colonialism while crafting a lyrical heist story that keeps you on the edge of your seat. The prose is absolutely gorgeous and manages to convey the deep, aching loss that is diaspora with lines that cut to the bone.

The characters themselves are also exceptionally crafted with each having distinct, compelling stories and motivations. First, we have Will Chen, the leader. As the eldest son of immigrants, he bears the crushing weight of generations of expectation while trying to accommodate his own dreams of becoming an artist. Irene Chen, his sister, is the con woman used to getting her way. The world opens itself to her, but she's hungry for something more. Daniel Liang, the lock pick, has his path planned out. Graduate from UCLA. Med School. Residency. But all the while, he is drifting from his father and would do anything to be acknowledged, to be seen. Lily Wu, the getaway driver, yearns to leave her small hometown and build something for herself. Finally, there's Alex Wu, the hacker, who dropped out of MIT for a job at Google. Her life is boring, stable, but it's what she needs to be able to support her family. The heist's offered bounty of $10 million each is what brings together this unlikely crew as they seek to return the artifacts back to their rightful place.

I don't really know what else I can say without sounding like a broken record, but this book is the most personal and raw narrative I've ever read. It's an instant favorite, and I can't wait to see what else Li has in store for the world.

This was one of my most anticipated reads of the year and I'm sorry to say that I'm left disappointed. The cover is beautiful and the plot so intriguing. Heists? Stealing back stolen artifacts? Sign me up!

Unfortunately, this book just never grabbed my attention. I'm not sure if this is a "it's not you, it's me" type of situation. For example, The Atlas Six is a very hyped and loved book that I disliked due to the writing, and many of the criticisms I have for that book are the same ones I have for Portrait of a Thief. Sometimes, it felt like I was reading the same book. This style just isn't for me.

First I'll start with what I liked. I like how this book discusses the topic of museums containing stolen artifacts. It's a very real and very important debate happening every day to determine where these artifacts belong and how to get them to their rightful homes. As poetic as this writing was, it was a surprisingly very quick read with short chapters, which I always appreciate. The sections that discussed Chinese diaspora made it clear that the author is very passionate about the topics she wrote about in this novel. I also enjoyed the subplot about Daniel and his father, and I think that readers will be able to relate to him. He was probably my favorite character in this book.

Now onto what I didn't like so much. I'm big into action and keeping the momentum. I do like character analysis and giving the characters time to talk and develop, but this book gave them too much time. Every chapter was introspective. We spent so much time inside these characters' minds, learning about their motivations, that there was nothing else to them. They would spend so long just musing and talking cryptically and then suddenly have a plan even though they had barely discussed it outside of their heads. It never felt like we went past surface level with most of the characters.

Every time the characters speak to each other it's in riddles and idioms, something so unrealistic and also somewhat irritating to read after a while. It's honestly more of a character analysis novel. And while they're all using large words to explain what this heist means to them and going into detail about their backgrounds and academics at Ivy League schools, they then use Google Docs and Zoom to plan it and are shocked when they're found out. It's hard to take them seriously when they seem to do no real prepping for their heists. They practically admit that the only reason they got away with one heist was because airport security was too overwhelmed. So why would a large corporation hire these college students with no experience? I think it would've been cool to have these students just decide to do this for themselves instead of being roped into it by a corporation for money.

The writing is to embellished that quite a bit of it could be cut down without any impact to the plot. There are 75 uses of the phrase "and yet-" and many instances of "what else is there but this?" or "there was only this" to the point where it started to lose its meaning and significance. Things are described as being "just the beginning" or "the end" and characters claim to now that this "was how it would always end". But nothing felt like it had actually begun. There's not a lot of actual action, barely any details about the heists themselves, just characters suddenly knowing how to pull it off. I also found that the characters sort of blended together after a while because they didn't have super distinct voices. They ran into problems but seemed to get around them just fine without any real issues or consequences. The final heist was pretty good, but I'm not sure if it makes up for the rest.

I believe this book is being optioned for Netflix, and I do think it would work well as a movie or show. The ideas are all there and it could make for a very compelling visual story. I know that plenty of readers are fans of this type of writing, so if you like very poetic writing, you might like this. But unfortunately for me, it missed the mark.

I love a heist. So, this book - compared to Ocean’s Eleven (one of my favorite movies of all time) and this cover? It was at the top of my must-reads for 2022. The premise is perfection - a group of Chinese American students band together to steal back Chinese art that was stolen by the west and return it to China - but the execution was lacking.

While the plot is pure pulp, the writing style is lyrical which doesn’t always mesh well. I love the actual heist aspects - the planning, the execution, the getaways - but everything in between felt like the author really trying to hit her word count quota. I’m all for character development, but there wasn’t development so much as the same traits and backstories repeated over and over and over again. Cut out all the extraneous descriptions, call it a novella and it would have been great, instead of only good.

Between the killer cover and the brilliant-sounding synopsis (a team of five Chinese American college students form a heist archetype supergroup to steal back art that was stolen from China) this book is going to be super popular. It unfortunately didn't work for me. The formation of the group was a little too tidy and the plot meandered more than I'd like for a heist story. That said, lots of people have loved this book, so it's still worth checking out.

This is a story about identity and belonging.  Will Chen is a senior art history major at Harvard.  He has always endeavored to be his parents' perfect child.  But as he approaches graduation, he begins to wonder whether the path he is on toward conventional success in America is really what he wants.  Then, a wealthy and mysterious figure in China reaches out with an unconventional proposition -- that Will leads a team to steal five priceless Chinese sculptures that had been stolen from Beijing hundreds of years ago.  

Will, driven by his ambivalence about his future and his questions about his Chinese American identity, decides to lead an unconventional team on this unconventional mission.  He assembles his own version of Oceans 11 -- his sister, a con artist and a senior at Duke; a getaway driver, his sister's roommate at Duke whose true passion is street racing; a hacker, an MIT dropout and current Silicon Valley engineer who Will previously dated; and a thief, his best friend Daniel whose strength in his pre-med classes is outstripped only by his expertise in lockpicking.  Each member of the team has their own, often complicated reasons for pursuing the mission.  What is clear for all of them, though, is that they will split a life-changing $50 million if they succeed -- and their promising futures will be over before they start if they fail.  

This was a very enjoyable read!  This is a fun heist book, entertaining as much for the team's efforts to prepare and execute each of their thefts as it is for the interactions among the team members.  It often feels cinematic -- the author excels at creating a sense of place, whether it is Beijing, Paris, Durham, Galveston, or Northern California.  Within this context, the book deftly explores interesting and timely issues around identity, ownership of cultural artifacts, and the nature of success.

Highly recommended!

I was very much looking forward to reading this book, but found myself disappointed with the slow pace. The cover is beautiful, the language is transporting and lyrical. But I was hoping for my Heist and less young adult “what should I do with my life?”

After witnessing an art theft while working in Harvard’s art museum, art history senior Will Chen is swept up into the world of art heists. He is recruited by a wealthy and enigmatic Chinese business to pull off a daring theft: steal back Chinese artifacts from Western museums and return them to China. He assembles his perfect team: Irene, his younger sister, who studies at Duke and can talk her way into (and out of) anything; her roommate Lily, a drag racing mechanical engineering student; Daniel, a childhood friend who’s on track to become a doctor, whose dad works for the FBI in the art theft department; and Alex, a wunderkind software engineer working in Silicon Valley. Together, they attempt to pull off five heists that they see as just, encountering people and feelings that they never expected to come across.

The number one thing that you should know going into this is that it is not like National Treasure. I don’t remember where I saw the comparison, but needless to say: I don’t know where that reviewer got that idea. I think maybe people see the word “heist” and just expect action and adventure, which is valid! But that isn’t the point of this book at all. There are thrills during the heists, but the main focuses of this book are colonialism and its effects on people, being children of the diaspora, and what cultural artifacts belong to whom. This is less a fast-paced, heart-pounding tale, and more a thought-provoking novel that aims to talk about things that certain institutions would prefer went unsaid.

I have something to admit. While reading Portrait of a Thief, I struggled to see what set the five main characters apart from every other character in a story about the diaspora. In this regard, I feel like maybe I’ve just become a little jaded, and I can admit that. Just because something is familiar or has been done before, that doesn’t mean that authors can’t still explore it, and this is what I had to remind myself. Certain aspects of this book just weren’t written with me in mind, and that’s something that I feel a lot of reviewers fail to see when reading outside of their culture or identity. It’s important to remember that! In my opinion, while the characters were interesting, what really set them apart is the way they each handled the heavy emotional toll of the heists. They all approached the heists in different ways, and the differences between them financially and culturally played a major part in that.

The idea of being able to reclaim and repatriate cultural items was such a comforting premise, and I think that Li wrote about it beautifully. You could tell that it’s something she’s passionate about, and while being scathing in her critique of shady museum practices, she showed so much care when examining the intergenerational effects of feeling unmoored. I found myself feeling very emotional while reading because even though I’m not Chinese, I am a child of a diaspora and the feelings are similar. The choice to have this novel told from the POVs of young people on the cusp of determining what they want to do with their lives was a smart one because we get to see them try to reconcile that with the longings that they feel culturally.

All in all, I enjoyed this book. Overall, I was a bit underwhelmed because it was a lot quieter than expected, but the conversations about art and history are what made me rate this book so highly. Not gonna lie though: I docked a half star off for Irene alone! She was a bitch for absolutely NO reason, and I hate that. I can usually appreciate a bitchy character—I often love them! But there has to be a reason behind it, and I saw no reason for Irene to act the way that she did for a large part of the book. It really soured my experience. Other than that, I would definitely recommend this book to readers looking for an intelligent and satisfying story of taking back what has been stolen by any means necessary.

PORTRAIT OF A THIEF is engrossing from the first page, featuring five young Chinese Americans hired to steal back Chinese art in Western museums. If you've been looking for a character-driven heist novel, don't miss this one.

The tone is generally contemplative, as the motivations for every move are just as important as the action itself. Occasionally the narrative plays around with time as one chapter might actually take place before the chapter it followed in the book. It’s clear when this happens. It’s used just often enough to be a feature of the storytelling, while being infrequent so that the book is linear overall.

Will is the logistical center of the group since he was the one hired to make the heist happen, but all five of the main characters have similar importance in the narrative. The style of rotating third-person narrators mean that not only do we get what each character thinks as the story progresses, but also we get what they think about each other in various combinations and circumstances. Will chose this crew, and so they all know him while having various levels of connection (or even no connection at first) to everyone else. Irene is his sister, Lily is her friend, Alex and Will briefly dated, and Daniel is Will’s friend. Just as important (or perhaps more) than these interpersonal connections is each of their relationships with China and their identities as Chinese Americans.

The worldbuilding is gradual, beginning with enough information to establish an approximate decade, then eventually dialing in on a one-to-two-year range for its start. Where it shines is in the complicated web of feelings that each person has about their positionality with regards to the United States and China, what that looks like and what it means for them individually and in relation to their families. Whether they think of themselves as Chinese Americans, as Americans, as Chinese, or some more nuanced blend of these... all of that combines to affect how they move through the world and, importantly for this heist story, how they move through Western museums holding (looted/stolen) Chinese artifacts and art.

I enjoyed the heists, but at times the actual heists are secondary to the process of each of the crew figuring out their feeling about themselves and each other. Even the attempt is transformational, and I love how the overall aim of the heists is handled.

This book follows a group of Chinese-American college students embarking on a heist to steal Chinese art that was taken from China during the days of colonialism, This book was well done - with the thrill of the heists, compelling character backgrounds and dynamics, coupled with exploration of diaspora, art, history and more. What I found a far fetched though was when they started planning the heist over zoom and all the info and research was put into a google doc. Overall this was a good book and I would read future books by this author.

What an absolutely fun and thrilling book! Five brilliant Asian American college students band together to pull off a Robin Hood-esque heist, stealing priceless works of art that had been looted from Beijing during an age when Westerners conquered and colonized with impunity. This one is perfect for summer reading.

The synopsis: a group of Chinese Americans brought together to bring back what once was a huge part of their culture in the past. Stolen items being brought back to it’s proper place among its people all while trying to decide who they were as young people in a crossroads between a new culture and old culture.

The group of five include: the leader (Will), the con artist (Irene), a thief (Daniel), the getaway driver (Lily), the hacker (Alex). Unfortunately for this group they are extremely out of their element in this story. Brought together by a corporation in Beijing these college students are supposed to pull of a huge heist that even the group from Ocean’s Eleven would have had trouble doing. Their lack of experience not only in living a lot of life but having done no “heists” in the past was my first uh-oh moment.

The writing at times very nicely developed was just too repetitive. The characters were not particularly likable and will not be remembered as soon as you finish the book. Their ability to do some of the stupidest things like communicating over completely hackable ways to figure out their plan was utterly stupid. Unfortunately there was just a lot lacking in this story and didn’t live up to what I was expecting after reading the synopsis, I was anticipating this being a huge adventure with characters that I was rooting for in their own different ways.

I would like to thank NetGalley and Penguin Group Dutton/Tiny Reparations Books for allowing me the opportunity to read this ARC for my honest review.

I was initially drawn to this book from the description, which says that it's a cross between Ocean's Eleven and The Farewell, both of which I love. To be honest, the heist portion is at times ridiculous (planning it on a Google Doc? seriously? they are Ivy Leaguers!!!) and definitely secondary to the characters. The characters are absolutely what made this for me. They are well-thought out, and interesting. Really, you could put these 5 in any situation and I would probably read it. I thought the ending was satisfying and very true to how the book progressed. I finished this book in 4 sittings, and I really enjoyed how short the chapters were.
I would definitely recommend this to others.

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Group Dutton / Tiny Reparations Books for the ARC!

A group of college students are recruited for a heist in this far-fetched yet enjoyable thriller. The characters were almost too perfect.

CWs: Some instances of experienced racism and xenophobia; some exploration of cancer, parental death, and grief

Portrait of Thief is a story that instantly caught my attention with the synopsis. There's something especially alluring about having an all-Asian heist that promises to grapple with the legacies of colonialism, racism, and the American Dream all in one story.

In the end, I think I was satisfied, in general, by how this book is able to thread those needles, but I also worry that potential readers might go in with uninformed expectations. So let me just say this: if you go into this book hoping for a high-octane heist that's bordering on a crime-thriller, you might be disappointed. It has those aspects at times, but that isn't the entire picture. The story is more on the literary side in how it explores generational diaspora, the effects of colonialism, and what these characters are willing to risk in order to achieve their dreams.

What stood out to me immediately about this group of characters is how perfectly ordinary they seem and how their approach to these heists, as inexperienced college students, feels very realistic. I love how even though they're all Ivy League students (or Ivy League dropouts in some cases) they don't have everything figured out. Heist stories usually require some suspension of disbelief, and while Portrait of a Thief requires that to some extent, it also doesn't make out its characters to be these highly-skilled, superhuman experts. Yes, they all specialize in certain areas that can contribute to pulling off these heists, but they're not perfect and they don't know everything.

That makes them somewhat endearing to me, especially because they sort of approach these heists as if they're a big group project. When they first agree to take on this job, they meet over Zoom and they start by watching heist movies together and comparing notes in a Google Doc. Mileage is definitely gonna vary on those details, depending on the reader, but I personally found that approach to be both funny and relatable, because these characters are students and not criminal masterminds. I appreciate that they're making the most of those collaborative resources and research methods that they can readily access.

I also appreciate the complex dynamics within the group, because the relationships between the characters are not the same across the board. Will and Irene, for example, are siblings, and there's a much more fraught history between them, and while their closeness could be an advantage, they also intimately know each other's weaknesses. Some of these collaborators are even strangers before the story begins, and there's no established baseline of trust between them, which can also cause a lot of tension. Some of these characters are exes, some of them are currently in love with each other, which only further complicates these heists, where any emotionally-charged action could jeopardize the entire mission.

But of course, the major highlight of this story is the way it promises to contend with colonialism in relation to art and how, historically, artwork has often been seen as a trophy of conquest passing between the hands of whoever lays claim to it. I really respect how the story engages with that complicated history, but most especially with how it ties into the characters' experiences of diaspora, which are all very different. On the surface, they tell themselves that stealing back these priceless pieces of Chinese artwork is "the right thing to do" because these artifacts belong in the places they were created, but there's a deeper layer of motivation for all of them, which is that they long for a concrete connection to China within their own right.

As children of diaspora, they feel removed from China—emotionally, socially, culturally, logistically—and they're desperate to be tied to their ancestral homeland in a way that can be observed, quantified, and unquestioned. That is the main motivator for all of them, whether they were born in China themselves or not. In that sense, the story makes a powerful statement about what it means to lay claim to your culture and your heritage when it has always been denied to you because of where you live or what language you speak.

The heists themselves also prove to be an apt metaphor for leading two different lives, as many children of diaspora often describe their experiences. For these characters, there's a stark disconnect between what they're doing under the cover of darkness and the person they're expected to be in broad daylight. Their everyday lives and roles almost seem to exist on completely different planes, and they start to question whether their "true" selves are the people willing to take dangerous risks or the pristine, accomplished students and future professionals that everyone else wants to see. Is it possible for them to be both things at once, or will they ultimately have to make a choice?

In my opinion, even though the circumstances seem extraordinary on the surface, there's a level of believability to the character motivation and the stakes. For these characters to be undergrads makes a strange kind of sense to me, because they're inhabiting a unique space where they have nothing to lose and everything to lose all the same time. Because our society operates on the false belief that a person's "real life" doesn't truly begin until after they graduate, these characters are being suspended in this liminal space between "student life" and "real life" where their future seems to hang on every choice. Most of them don't have careers yet, so they don't have "much" to lose, comparatively, but they're also facing severely limited options and tons of debt as the price tag for their education, and they know that cash reward could make a significant difference.

As young Asian-American people, especially, who have to contend with the "model minority" expectation and whose parents have instilled the value of the American Dream deep in their consciousness, they have all the motivation they need not to fail. They've always been taught to strive for greatness, no matter the cost, and they're going to apply that mentality to these heists just as much as anything else they've tried to achieve. As criminals, in a way, they are perfect products of the academic system doing exactly what they were designed to do: risk everything for greatness and success.

So, thematically, there's a lot going on under the surface of this story, and I think that's what makes it so compelling. There's a strong balance of those personal threads with the actual heist sequences, and like I said before, I think the outcome is fairly believable, all things considered.

With that said, I think this story could've been even stronger. I found myself wishing that the characters' parents were more present throughout the story, especially given how much parental pressure inadvertently factors into their choices. Daniel's father was pretty much the only parent given any page time, and in fairness I think it was mostly for plot reasons because he works with the FBI. Related to that, I also feel like there's a level of convenience and privilege that is never properly addressed in the book. Yes, for the most part these characters are operating on this shadow corporation's dime, but they're also Ivy League students who have access to a lot of capital, they have insider information, they're flying to all these different countries, they have all these doors open for them, and the story never really grapples with that in a meaningful way.

Additionally, while the story does briefly touch on the irony of China, as an imperialist nation itself, wanting to reclaim its artwork from other imperialist nations, I think the story could've used even more of that commentary and historical context. There were also some supporting characters who came into the story about halfway through whose role in the overarching plot didn't make a lot of sense. I won't say anything else for fear of spoiling the book, but their inclusion just added to that element of convenience hanging over the conclusion of the story.

But even with those missed opportunities, I still think this is a fascinating story that offers the reader so much to think about. As a self-contained story, it's incredibly ambitious and it's also a fast-paced debut that makes me excited to see what else Grace D. Li writes. I know it's already been picked up by Netflix, I believe, for on screen adaptation, and honestly it might work even better as a TV series. Either way, I would watch the hell out of it any day of the week. I think if potential readers adjust their expectations accordingly, then this could be an incredibly exciting and memorable read for many folks this year.

This was an action/psychological fiction that was different than anything I’ve read before.

However, the heist scenes weren’t as well-thought out as I would have liked.

Special thanks to NetGalley, Penguin Group Dutton/Reparations Books and Grace D. Li for sharing this book in exchange for my honest review.

"For so long, the past had been a wound still open. Now he could run his finger along the mark those years had left. Scars were nothing but tissue, keratin, a reminder of what the body could endure."

In Portrait of a Thief, Harvard senior and art history major Will Chen happens to be working at the Sackler museum in some sort of a peon role when it gets robbed and he stumbles upon a mysterious business card left behind in the robbery's wake. From there, he cobbles together a group of fellow college-aged folks for a trip to Beijing: his lil' sis Irene who can con her way into/out of anything, Irene's roomie Lily who happens to be a mechanical engineering student by day and a race car driver by night, Will's bestie Daniel whose father happens to be an investigator in the FBI who specializes in stolen art, and Google employee Alex who codes and stuff, so you know, it's not a stretch at all that she could become a hacker. When this ragtag group shows up in Beijing, a wealthy benefactor offers them $50 million if they can steal five Zodiac heads from five different western museums and return the goods to China. Because it makes totes sense that a rich and powerful person would entrust such a job to a bunch of inexperienced almost-children.

This book is definitely a 3.5 starer rounded up. I knew when I picked it up I'd have to suspend my disbelief on some level, but man did Li take it too far. I mean, I watched Fast & Furious 9 and Ludacris and Tyrese driving a flying car through space and subsequently safely landing on the International Space Station was more believable than the premise of Portrait of a Thief.

However, as much as I just dogged on this book, it really does have a lot going for it. Li did a great job of penning five different Chinese American characters who all have complicated and separate relationships with what it means to be part of two cultures simultaneously - from Daniel who grew up in China to Alex who'd never set foot there before this heist began. And once I set aside my very big gripe with how the whole premise was set up to begin with, the plot was fast paced and thoroughly entertaining. Additionally, I'd never previously given too much thought to how messed up it is that western museums have stolen a lot of art from around the world that isn't theirs and refused to give it back. That's at the forefront of this novel, and I appreciate that this book gave me the opportunity to ponder such not-so-awesomeness.

Maybe in her next novel Li will delve into flying cars or teleportation and the whole thing will be a tad more believable.

~ Thank you to NetGalley and Tiny Reparations Books for providing me with an early copy in exchange for an honest review! RELEASE DATE: April 5 ~

DNF @50%

I am so, so sad that I didn't end up liking this book. That being said, DNFing was a really tough decision. I think if I powered through I could have rated this anywhere between 2.5 and 3.5 stars, but I'm trying to be more selective with my reading and since I was never inclined to keep picking this up, even by the halfway point, I think it's better for me to DNF.

This was by far one of my most anticipated releases of 2022—the premise sounded PHENOMENAL—but ultimately, it didn't deliver in the way it was described.

I wouldn't call this a heist novel. Yes, there are a few robberies, but nothing at all reminiscent of Ocean's Eleven. No grand plans and death-defying stunts. Just some broken glass and running away.

What this book really is is a tale of five college kids dealing with Chinese American diaspora. I found many of these conversations to be very interesting, and I could tell that people in real life who live that experience will find a lot of relatability and value in them. But, at the same time, the writing of this novel caused some of these conversations to feel less effective.

The first reason for this is that the characters felt a little flat. They almost weren't, like I felt like I understood inklings of them, but it never came together fully.

And now the biggest reason I ended up DNFing: the prose of this book is irritatingly repetitive. I swear to you, nearly every other sentence is "He was all [adjective] [noun] and [adjective] [noun], eyes gazing up at the sky, at the [describes sun and light and water and a city], at the world brimming with possibility."

At the beginning I thought I was being picky, but over the course of the book I kept getting ripped out of the story by reading the same descriptions and scenes and conversations multiple times without them going anywhere new.

I think this had some of the same problems as Christopher Nolan's Tenet: people talking about random things in nondescript locations like airports, and then having a random action sequence, repeat. Except in this book, the action sequences weren't actually exciting.

Looking back at what I've written here, I feel like it sounds pretty harsh. I do want to say I really think this author has potential—even though the writing was incredibly repetitive, that is the editor's fault, not hers. The descriptions at the heart of the redundant structure were quite beautiful though, and I am curious to see what else she goes on to write.

I think this could be an interesting Netflix series, as I know it was already optioned, but I think the structure would have to be mended a bit. I'm intrigued to see where it goes.

Baby driver x Chinese art/culture

Portrait of a Thief is a wonderful novel about 5 college students who are offered a huge task… one that involves 50 million dollars: they have to steal Chinese art that has been away from the home country for hundreds of years. Will they be able to pull off stealing from art museums 5 times over?

I really loved this story. As a debut novel, Portrait of a Thief is great. The characters were loveable. The plot line is fascinating and a excellent idea. I loved the subtle romance story lines. The story was more about a sense of belonging in your ancestry than art thievery; wanting to create your own story within your history.

However, I felt that I couldn’t connect with the characters on a level beyond superficial. There wasn’t a lot of character interaction besides talking and planning of the heists. Since there were multiple POV’s, it felt that feelings and thoughts were repeated. Other things were repeated as well, such as selected sayings (“There was this…”, “And yet-there was this too.”). I also wanted to read more about their heist and the strategy of pulling it off.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book. The idea story and themes were just amazing the entire time. It moved a little slowly, but I loved persevering, if not for the characters and wanting to know the outcome.

Thank you NetGalley and Penguin Group for this opportunity to read this ARC. Thank you Grace D. Li for your debut novel. Can’t wait for more.