Such a fun idea for a book. It's like a high stakes spy movie meets high society in the age of Jane Austen novels. Deception and love intertwined,

I loved this book's concept, but fear the execution didn't measure up. When I think of con-people, I want high stakes and fast-paced stress. I didn't get that from this book. It was interesting enough for me to finish it, but that's the extent.

The Queen of Fives is a captivating read that takes places in London in the late 1800's.

We meet Quinn LeBlanc who is a con woman and is about to pull off her most elaborate hoax ever.

She is about to wed (she hopes) a Duke from one of England's most wealthiest family.

His money is irresistible and heaven knows Quinn more than needs it.

Victorian High Society makes for an interesting read and Quinn is about to discover just how interestng.

Twists and turns with high stakes and interesting characters kept the pages turning into the night.

Thanks to NetGalley and Harlequin Trade Publishing/Graydon house for a thoroughly enjoyable read.

Quinn Le Blanc is the head (queen) of a household of confidence artists. They have been having a run of bad luck but Quinn is about to implement her biggest con ever. She plans to catch a Duke, or at least his fortune. But something about the Duke and his household seems off. And what is behind the run of bad luck? This is not just a simple con!

A con artist desperate for a successful swindle embarks on her most ambitious plot yet, targetting a wealthy family with more secrets than she reckoned for.

This book had me intrigued at the start, but lost me in the middle a bit as the author had the characters circling each other. The stakes didn't feel quite high enough, but it was an overall enjoyable read.

2/5 stars.

This book features historical fiction with some mystery and had some great potential, but unfortunately fell completely flat. This book was a great concept and was about a con-woman pulling off different heists who sets her latest mark on a Duke. I wanted to love this book so much, but I didn’t follow the dialogue between characters nor the actual story line either. I found myself bored and wanting to put the book down often. Thank you Harlequin Publishing, Netgalley, and the author for the opportunity to review this book in exchange for an honest review.

For fans of: Laurie R King, Celeste Connally
Genre: 🔎 Historical Mystery
Rating: 🌕🌕🌕🌕🌗
Violence: 🪓🪓
Spice: 🔥

Synopsis: Quinn is a master confidence trickster in 1898 London. But she needs to pull off her best con ever—engage herself to a duke & swindle him for a fortune—or lose her empire.

Thoughts: While an intriguing premise, this book is so much more than its initial description conveys. A historic heist novel sounds delicious enough, but this story folds games within games in an unending parade of Matryoshka doll plot twists. If not for a throw-away hint that nearly passed by unnoticed, it would have stumped me to the very end. Despite the complexity of story line, Hay sets a fast pace with punchy dialog that far outweighs exposition. The layered complexity of the key characters grabs your attention from the moment of introduction. In particular, the mysterious, Chameleon-like opponent that shadows Quinn before the con even commences demonstrates some of the most innovative character development I’ve ever seen. The Queen of Fives is the rare type of story that tempts you to turn back to the beginning so you can peak behind its stage dressing, witnessing the ingenuity beyond.

I will definitely read Hay’s 2023 The Housekeepers. And if we’re lucky, Hay will deliver on the promise to delve deeper into the world he created in The Queen of Fives.

Thank you to Harlequin Publishing & NetGalley for a gifted copy in exchange for an honest review.

Historical fiction and murder, my favorite marriage. Enjoyed the story. Thanks to the author and publisher for an arc. All opinions are my own.

The Queen of Fives by Alex Hay was a great book! I loved the writing in it, very interesting book overall.

Hello! I thank Netgalley for an ARC of the Queen of Fives. I was super excited to have read the Queen of Fives after having completed the Housekeepers (another super book by Alex Hay). The Queen of Fives, by its title alone, is compelling, but the story is even more so if that is possible. A reader could think 'Ocean's 11' but with a Victorian era twist included. This book kept me in suspence with each page, each word, each chapter. Quinn LeBlanc is a marvel at spinning a tale and encouraging others to do her bidding - surrounding, in a way, her team and her marks so that no one suspects anything. That said, her marks were marked, but Quinn was also being played. I would say this book reminds me of a slow-build character-development mystery that would be amazing in movie/series form on PBS Masterpiece. A stellar achievement! Thank you! :)

tl;dr
A fast-paced con story set in Victorian times with a great twist on the usual formula. Main character lags behind everyone else in terms of character development.

Thoughts
Quinn le Blanc is the "Queen," a title reserved for the most talented con woman in London. The position of queen is typically supported by an entire household of fellow con artists, but times have been tough lately, and the once-thriving crew is down to Quinn and one final servant faithful to the house itself. Deep in debt and running out of time, Quinn needs a score - a BIG one - to fix everything. She sets her sights on the Kendals, the richest family in town, with a very eligible bachelor who is finally on the market. But the spate of bad luck that's plagued her might not be more intentional than she thinks.

And this is where things get rough for me. First off, I actually really love this wrinkle. A third party lurking in the shadows to add extra complications for an unwitting MC is a great addition to the expected con/heist plot, and I found said third party to be the most interesting part of the whole story. And that's my frustration. I wanted to care about Quinn more, but I just couldn't. Her history and motivations don't get much attention, leaving us to simply accept that she's here because the story demands it. I would have liked to see her wrapping up a con at the start just to prove her skills so we can see the chasm between her normal con and how badly this one goes. It would make the twists hit harder when things start falling apart. More flashbacks about her own training as she ascended to Queen would have also been really great for fleshing out who she is. As it is, Quinn is the character with the least development. She's so good at hiding her feelings from the other characters, but it's sad that she also manages to keep them from the reader. The author's notes suggest there might be a spinoff of this book based on the con woman training school that Quinn attended, but it kind of felt like this was the spinoff book about the school's most famous graduate, and the school would be the setting of a full series. And to be honest, I would absolutely read that series. There's a lot of world building here to mine, and the snippets we got about training up the next generation of con artists were very fun.

The rest of the cast come in much stronger. The Kendals are a proper messy rich family full of issues, and the other players all have their own complicated motivations. The plot moves quickly, with multiple POVs. If you like your cons with a side of soapy drama, this will definitely land for you.

I was quite intrigued by the premise of The Queen of Fives by Alex Hay, and was looking forward to reading it.
However, it was not what I expected. From the start, the entire cast of characters fell flat, and I didn't care about a single one of them. Although it is proficiently written, the pace of the book was so slow, I found it easy to put down and increasingly difficult to pick back up again.
Once I got to the 38% read mark, I realized that I truly didn't care about finishing it and decided to put it on my DNF file.
I appreciate the ARC of #TheQueenofFives that I received from #NetGalley, and am sorry I wasn't interested enough to finish the book.

3.5 🌟, rounded up

A Victorian era conwoman is right up my alley. I really enjoyed the setting and characters in this novel, but the pacing was a little all over the place. I would have liked more of a history for the Chateau and an explanation of the "games" that they play.

Nonetheless I really enjoyed Quinn as a protagonist, and there were a few twists I really didn't see coming and I'm always delighted when that happens.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC!

I'm so fond of a good confidence story, and this one had it all: There was cleverness and conniving, duplicity and despair, crosses and double crosses to spare...yet, it was all a bit sad, in the end.

An interesting plot but all the twists and turns made it difficult to follow. Characters were interesting but not likeable and by the end of the book I was not really interested in what happened to them.

I would give this 3 1/2 stars,since it was better than a 3 but not as good as a 4. This is the story of Quinn, the Queen of Fives, who plans to scam a Duke out of his fortune. She is assisted by her companions Silk and Mrs. Airlie, but things don't go to plan. The man in the blue waistcoat is working to stop the goings on. I found Quinn's parts of the narrative interesting but the Blue Waistcoat parts didn't provide enough to keep me interested--but I kept going because I wanted to find out who he was.

Honestly, this book was good but there were certain aspects that I felt could’ve been taken out to make the story move a little faster. Sometimes I felt myself get into a reading slump because I was just too bored and I felt nothing was happening.

I did love the storyline and the main female character I just felt it needed a little less filler. <3

This was another one of those books that I thought had so much potential, but just fell quite a bit short of hitting the mark for me.

I mean, a historical (Victorian) fiction mystery marriage scheme??? That sounds like so much fun to me! But that amazing concept wasn't executed as nicely or entertainingly as it could have been. After reading it, it makes me think that maybe this concept would have been better as a movie (which is something I rarely say, I am a book before the movie kind of reader). But I could see this being VERY successful as a movie because I feel like it would feel better paced in that medium.

I felt like this book moved so very slowly. I even had to skim the first and last 15-ish% just to get through it because I felt like nothing was happening.

The characters were so two-dimensional to start and with next to no character development by the end of the book (and as a character-driven reader, character development is so incredibly important to me, I want to see the character thinking and processing).

Thanks to NetGalley for the e-ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review! My Goodreads review is up and my TikTok (Zoe_Lipman) review will be up at the end of the month with my monthly reading wrap-up.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this book.

I almost really liked this but something (some things?) just didn’t sit right with me. The story is the thriller-ish/mystery/suspense historical fiction tale of Quinn, the head of a crime house in Victorian England. According to the rules of her crime ring she has 5 days to con a wealthy heir into marriage.

But we are never quite sure what the rules are and the ones we do learn are parceled out gradually over the course of the story. Throw in the mysterious heir with secrets of his own; his angry, scorned sister; and their cunning stepmother plus Quinn’s network of lawbreakers and hang on for a ride through the various echelons of society.

I guessed a handful of twists early on but was still surprised by a couple. I felt that the language used and names were not quite right for the time period. I didn’t really care about any of the characters. It did become a page turner about half way through.

3.5 stars