My expectations were quite high for this one. Mainly because it was advertised as a heist story, so I thought it would be something like six of crows, or oceans eleven as it was described. I went into it with that mindset, so maybe that's why I wasn't really feeling it. I didn't dislike the story, but I didn't particularly like it either? I think it's just very much a "not for me" kind of book.

Thank you to the publisher for sending me a copy of this book to review.

I was excited to read about a novel that had the premise of a heist and art. I love the intensity that typically comes with these themes. However, I did not receive that with this book. It felt too low stakes and didn't keep me as invested as I had anticipated.

I am aware we are now headed into novels where modern technology etc are more common in novels however, this added to the low stakes with applications such as Google Docs and Zoom being used. That takes me out of the story because it reminds me of group projects rather than a heist. If there were to be multiple heists in a book, then the book either needed to be longer or turned into a series. There wasn't enough detail for each heist to be invested in the outcome.

However, I did like the different representations that were found within these characters.

The premise and promise of this book feel somewhat undermined by its marketing. Yes, the plot revolves around art heists, but the heists - and even the planning of them - are hardly the main focus of the narrative. There are multiple missed opportunities to create thrilling scenes that would leave readers breathlessly turning pages. However, action scenes are relatively short and segue into character exploration and rumination. After reading this with a mystery book club, most members agreed that it was an enlightening coming of age story more than a mystery or crime novel.

A group of various college students coming together to steal back Chinese art from various museums to place them in their rightful home is a great premise. Each character had their unique skills they could bring to the heist. I wish the book was longer. I would have loved to read more about the characters and how they found themselves later on.

You can tell that the author cares deeply for each of these characters from the way they are written. Their actions and the places they inhabit all feel very stylish and romanticized. It honestly didn't matter if the author was describing the beauty of Harvard in the Autumn or the neon glow of being outside a fast food restaurant past midnight. They found a way to make each setting sound so aesthetically pleasing. This is what really stuck out to me. While the story centers more on the character development than the action of the art heists themselves, I didn't mind. Each of the characters were well-developed enough to keep me invested even though I personally wish the moments of drama within their group would have been pushed a little farther and been a bit "messier." Overall it was interesting to read about their own personal relationships to both China and America and their motivations for participating in the heists. The author never lost sight of these themes throughout the book and I felt like each character's arc concluded in a meaningful way by the end.

Special thanks to Penguin Group Dutton and NetGalley for the ARC of this book.

I liked this book, I didn't love it. Maybe if it had 2 POVs instead of multiple. I did like the art history, the multiple heists, but I think for me I should've went in blind because I expected more than I got.

I did appreciate the diaspora of growing up and having a different culture of your family and maybe that's why college aged kids were doing heists to please their families being successful, but not by thieving for Pete's sake.

My mom was an exceptional artist winning many competitions and getting 1st place, so I did love the things I learned about art and art history.

It was a good book, just not great!

Simply put, wow. This was a beautifully written love letter to the children of diaspora and I feel honoured to have read it. It feels like something so intimately written for me, that speaks so well to my experiences, and my feelings- there was no way I wasn’t going to love this. I’ve never read a book and come out feeling so entirely represented by the characters; this has single-handedly caused a crisis in my self-identity, while maybe also solving it. It’s like she took my indecipherable feelings and translated them into english. And while the prose felt very repetitive at moments and the plot could benefit from being fleshed out a bit, there is little to say that would decrease my opinion of this book.

To sum it up: It feels like someone took a potato peeler to my head and just completely exposed me. Now here I am!

Oh, my heart. I absolutely loved this book.

The highlight for me on this book is the conversations on identity and the pressures of being a child or grandchild of immigrants, where you're just old enough to fully understand the implications of the sacrifices made and how you often feel like you have to repay that sacrifice with your own success, whatever that looks like. I also enjoyed the diverse perspectives on how they feel about China based on their own experiences.

I liked the way that this book addresses the idea of museums who have stolen artifacts from years of imperialism and colonialism, giving a spotlight on the sticky origins of collections and the reluctance to return them back to cultures. I especially loved the phrase that gets brought up many times throughout the novel to describe how the affected cultures feel about it.

And the heists themselves! I do like how realistic they were for a bunch of college aged people, and how each one goes very differently. I appreciate how much improvision often had to happen.

I liked the relationships between our crew - each one had complications even if they hadn't interacted before being brought together. And the relationships between people who had pre-existing relationships before the events of the book added layers of complexity in how they'd often dance around each other. Personally, I enjoyed the full arc between Irene and Alex, although it was incredibly frustrating at times when it got in the way of their working together nicely in the group.

I saw that this book is set to be adapted for the screen and the book definitely reads in a way where I could see it translating nicely, especially the final story arc. I can't wait to watch it.

This book is definitely joining my favorites.

A thank you to PENGUIN GROUP Dutton, Tiny Reparations Books, and NetGalley for the ARC.

2.5
This was not my favorite book. I feel like it was missing a lot and just wasn't what I was expecting. I was very unattached to all the characters and their relationships. I wish I enjoyed this book more because it was one of the books I was more excited for, but alas, it was not.

This was good, but not excellent. I liked the main character but it felt a little forced. Was a fine read, but probably wouldn't purchase it for myself!

I think this has been on my radar since it was announced. The premise has always sounded amazing but with that being said this just didn't hit for me. I didn't hate it or really dislike it I just didn't love it as much as I thought I would.

VIDEO REVIEW OF THIS BOOK CAN BE FOUND HERE: https://youtu.be/8MPeV3Fkygw?t=441

This book is about a group of five friends if I'm not mistaken.
If I look like I don't remember this book as much as I usually do it's because I read it in 2022 before having a baby, before having mom brain and all that stuff so bear with me if I if the details are fussy.
So this book is about a group of friends. It's a brother sister, a friend they had from childhood, another girl that the brother knows because they dated or they met somehow at work, I don't remember, and another girl that goes to school with the sister.
So this group of people are hired by someone, by a millionaire, that wants to recover the Zodiac Heads that were looted from a palace in China like 300 or 400 years ago.
I didn't know anything about this so I started Googling and the book explains some of it as well.
There was an Imperial Palace back in China many years ago and because of something that China did with nationals from Britain, the UK came to China and they looted, they set the palace on fire and they stole basically all of the art that was in the palace which was worth a lot of money back then and it's worth a lot of money right now.
So apparently there's been some controversy about this art for many years. Now this book takes on some of that controversy, it's not like everything is made up, no, not at all.
I'm sure there are a lot of millionaires back in China that would certainly pay a lot of money to some people to recover these sculptures and this art somehow which is what the book proposes.
So each of these five people have some type of skill. One of them is good with computers, one of them is really good with driving, like driving a getaway car, one of them is really good with art, they know a lot about art, the other one is like really good like getting around with people and maybe knowing how to make people not suspect them or how to get their way and I don’t remember the talent of the fifth one but you get the idea.
So let's imagine something like Oceans 11, Oceans 12, but with a museum robbery instead of a casino.
I feel the idea was great but I didn't like the ending, I didn't like how I feel like at the beginning the plot is really slow, with how they get together, how they are planning everything but then how the book evolves and how it ends it was underwhelming for me.
I feel like the idea was amazing but I didn't like the ending.
If I had to be honest I think though that this would be a great movie maybe instead of a book.

I’m so glad to have read this book. Especially so close to finishing Warrior Girl Unearthed by Angeline Boulley. Both dealt with museums and their history of theft. In Portrait of a Thief they specifically deal with the theft of items from China and how it relates to colonization and identity. There was so much about it that resonated with me as a Native person and how many of these museums house stolen cultural artifacts and artwork, as well as human remains. I liked how this book covered the topic in the guise of a fun Ocean’s Eleven-esque heist story. There were multiple POV’s that switched between chapters and each character was distinct, with unique experiences as Chinese American people. I appreciated how the story unfolded, with a good mix of the fun heist aspects and a more serious exploration of museums’ direct relationship with colonization. I was having worries about where the book was going and what message it sent, but it took a good turn, flipping the responsibility onto the museums. It isn’t tied up all neat and clean, as it shouldn’t be. There’s so much work left to do and we’ve barely scratched the surface. I’m so glad there are fiction works coming out that are directly calling it out.

I so wanted to like this book because the synopsis sounded like so much fun. Teaming up to steal priceless art pieces really sounded like such an adventure. However, the multiple points of views got really confusing; I wished the author would have only chosen one or two to tell the story in.

Overall, I think those that like the multiple POVs would have a blast but it just wasn't for me. Thought Portrait of a Thief didn't wow me, I'm really looking forward to the next book by the author in 2024. I'm looking forward to it.

I really wanted to love this more than I did- as an Asian American in academia myself I expected to resonate so deeply, but unfortunately so much about it fell flat for me.

I don't think that this book has any especially egregious sins, more the fact that it feels flat in its activism and doesn't give its cast the full opportunity to shine. Most of the characters feel more like archetypes than actual people, and I think that the heist structure ends up doing more harm than good. Pacing issues are also present here.

That being said, this was not a /bad/ read- I did enjoy portions of it, and I think that Li has great promise as a writer. Her prose is especially lovely and there were endearing interactions between the cast that almost made up for how flat they felt, but unfortunately wasn't enough to win me back over. I'll be keeping an eye out for Li's next work, but this left me sorely disappointed.

I think it must be hard to write a heist book bc most of the ones I've read just haven't completely hit the mark and this one is no exception. The heist is pretty simple and not well developed (that being said I literally do not need a ton of explanation bc it always goes over my head anyways) but it did seem a bit too easy at times.

I saw a review that called this more of a literary work than a heist/mystery book and I would agree. The conversations on art, colonialism, museum ownership, and diaspora are where this book shines with the heist and the characters being the foundation for all of that.

I would've liked if all the the characters got their own narrator or wish the two narrators had done a better job distinguishing the different characters bc if I missed a chapter break I kept forgetting whose POV I was in.

But I was engaged in this story and overall enjoyed my time listening to it despite my critiques.

I liked it! I thought that having 5 points of view would make this a challenging read, but Grace D. Li integrates each of the characters in a way that is interesting and easy to follow. The author did a beautiful job at describing the diaspora that comes with living within a culture you might not entirely identify with — I related a lot to the characters feeling too Asian for the Americans and too American for the Asians. I also learned a lot about Chinese art history, which was really cool.

Thank you for the opportunity to read this novel. I was not able to finish so won't be leaving a full review at this time.

Heist movies or books are crowd pleasers; we all love a good heist plot. Now give me a heist with a cause and it’s chef’s kiss. The theft and smuggling of cultural relics by the global west and the continued refusal to acknowledge that is an ongoing discussion. certain institutions are trying to make amends (Cambridge for example), but some have maintained a stubborn silence up till now. Recently, there was even a viral video of a Cambodian native performing a prayer dance before some temple statues at the Met; the room was empty and she was disturbing no one, but she was told to leave the room. This is all to say that the plot of this book deals with an issue very dear to the hearts of many from the “global south”, and I had high expectations for it. Unfortunately, the novel failed to meet them.

The story starts off really well with a few Asian American college students being approached to take back certain artifacts that were looted from China, and now placed in various museums around the world. The students form a rag-tag group, everyone having their own motivations for accepting the offer. However, the heists did not work well: they were neither well-planned nor well-executed, and had me wondering how they’d ever thought it would work.

I do think this book would have worked if it was structured around a different issue rather than the heists themselves. For example, if the book had been written as an exploration of what it means to be Chinese American, and how Chinese Americans battle with proving that they are true Chinese, it would have been wonderful. After all, this is something the characters struggled with. I did enjoy the dynamics among the members of the team, as they learnt about each other and became found family. I wish the book had been marketed as something else. Overall, although my expectations going into the book were not read, it was an okay read.

Although I was immensely excited for this novel, I quickly realized that I would not enjoy it. It started off strong, with a writing style that I initially enjoyed. However, its flowery writing was extremely overdone; it rapidly became far too repetitive, with the same phrases being stated over and over again. This was my biggest issue with Portrait of A Thief; when something as defining as an author's writing style is not enjoyable, it just ruins the entire reading experience.

My other grievances with this novel: The backstory about different characters was sprinkled in throughout the book, but I would have liked more at the beginning, as I was very lost. I felt as if the romance was not developed, either; I couldn't bring myself to even care about the different characters themselves, so the romance was far out of the question. Furthermore, I liked the pacing at times but at others, it was excruciatingly slow. And the ending? Too messy, too quick and left me wanting too much more.

Ultimately, if this novel had had another round of edits and revision I would have liked it a lot more. Unfortunately, this was a disappointing read for me.

2 stars