The twists and turns in this book drove me crazy but in a good way. It starts fast and just keeps going as you see the characters move throughout the book to see where it all ends up.

It reminded me a lot of Veronica Mars as you see the main character grow throughout the book as they try to survive. The author handles the trauma well and I felt they handled it well to make their way to the end.

Thanks to NetGallery and the publisher for this Arc in exchange for my honest review.

First of all: this book is partly dedicated to the author's cats, and frankly, I think they should have included pictures. I want to see Salt An, Peppa and Frederica Bimmel.

I think when you read the blurb and the tags for a book, you automatically make some assumptions about the plot. This book didn't match any of my assumptions. It was almost impressively how different it is from the fun thief romance shenanigans I visualized.

You know those narrators who are so unreliable, they basically lie to your face in first person POV? Ella Gatz is one of them. This occasionally made for a confusing or frustrating reading experience, but interesting at the same time. This girl is a chess prodigy, and she's playing 3D chess in real life with real people as pawns. I had some pretty wild theories for where the plot was going, and none of them were right (still kinda sad about one of them), but it came with its own wild plots instead. Ella is a complex and maybe a bit morally grey character who is NOT a reliable narrator by any means, but you can see the childhood that led her to become this person, and she's a great character.

I do need to mention that this book deals with domestic abuse in a significant way. It's pretty "closed door" and more implied than explicit in description, but it gives the whole book a threatening, tense air.

The protagonist is sapphic asexual, and there are multiple sapphic side characters.

Ella Gatz was home alone the night someone broke into her house and stole a painting that her mother loved. Ironically her father is a top security specialist so how did someone seemingly just walk in.
Ella sees the thief and tries to get her father to call the police but he is in fact glad the painting is gone.
He’s very controlling and Ella and his home security team have no other choice.
Or do they? Ella takes it upon herself to hunt the thief down.
This has some twists and turns especially when Ella finds out her father knows the thief but how, why did this happen?
Interesting young adult book.


Thank you #netgalley #boldstrokesbooks #stolenhearts for this ARC