Such a fun heist story!
Edie is fresh off a prison stint. After being betrayed by her childhood friend on a job gone wrong, Edie, is determined to go straight, help her sister and family out and just live her life. Unfortunately finding a legal job is proving harder than she's anticipated (Is Edie the only one who didn't realize immediately that Angel was the one who had her blackballed?!?) But, naive or not, there are bills to pay, so Edie let's Angel draw in for one last big score.
And what a score and what a team! A fun blending of characters, personalities and talents all coming together to get rich and pull one over on the evil corporations. A feel good story with a little redemption arc (for more than one character) and a satisfying ending. Not everything needs to be a series with never ending cliff hangers!

Story: 3.5 stars rounded up to 4 stars
Narration: 5 stars

Hammajang Luck is your typical heist story. However, what makes this story fun and unique is the futuristic space station setting and found family aspects. The narration by Jolene Kim was excellent! Jolene did an incredible job giving each character a distinct voice. I knew who was speaking without any tags saying who was who (which is super important to me with an audiobook). Jolene also aced the pidgin, which I felt made this a unique listening experience.

Edie was betrayed eight years ago during a job. They're done, they're out, and now they are going straight. However, no one will hire them and they need money to help their family and sister. Angel, who betrayed her on the last job, hires Edie for one last job. During this story, we follow Edie as they grapple with their past, help gather a crew for the heist, and complete the job with all of its trials and tribulations.

Things I enjoyed:
- The narration
- The futuristic space station setting
- The found family aspects
- How unique each character felt
- The representation

Things that weren't for me:
- I feel like this book would have done better with a third person narrator, instead of a first person, especially with so many characters.
- There were moments in the writing that were very 'tell,' not 'show.' It felt very much like a debut novel at times.
- This took place in a futuristic setting on a space station with body modifications, visual interfaces, cyborgs, and more, and yet Edie's father fixed TVs and vacuums.... That just didn't make sense to me, and little things like that took me out of the story at times.

This sci-fi heist novel sounded interesting and while I did enjoy parts of it, I thought the actual heist itself was a bit of a let down. The novel does not live up to its comparison to Ocean's Eleven but where its strongest is the heartfelt family connections, the second chance Sapphic romance and the cast of queer BIPOC characters. Good on audio and recommended for fans of books like The undetectables by Courtney Smyth. Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an early audio copy in exchange for my honest review!

Gave this a 2.5 on StoryGraph.

I wanted to like this so badly. The premise was cool and it's the first book I've seen touted as similar to Gideon the Ninth, which is probably my favorite book, so it made me very excited.

This book had two things going against it for me:

1. The comparison to Gideon the Ninth. Which I never understood. I can't tell if someone thought GTN was a heist novel or this was just based on the enemies to lovers thing which is not really a selling point when it comes to GTN (meaning that I wouldn't sell GTN to anyone by saying it has an enemies to lovers plot line).

2. Heist + found family. My expectations were very high and this did not meet it. I was bored. This was a very boring heist.

It's truly unfortunate how quickly I lost interest because I think that including other cultures and religions in futuristic sci-fi is really important! It bothers me when books have some "idealistic" future where everyone gets along and have moved past the need for religion or whatever. I just find it hard to believe that people wouldn't hang on to their culture even if they were living on the Moon or in a space station (Lady Eve's Last Con does this really well, I think). So it does have that going for it! As well as queer rep!

I listened to the audiobook which I thought helped a lot with the unknown-to-me language.

This just wasn't for me.

Thank you to NetGalley for making this available in exchange for an honest review.

it was a typical read, predictable from page one. The writing too was generic, which fortunately made it a quick read but not an enjoyable one.

Many thanks to Harper audio and net galley for providing me this audio copy of Hammajang Luck!

I loved this book. Between the lush world building and characters I found myself very interested and invested in the story. Yamamoto has a lot to say, but the strong social messaging is delivered artfully enough that it doesn't detract from what is also a fairly engaging and exciting novel.
I can easily envision recommending this book to readers who are interested in dipping their toes into sci-fi (but not sure where to start), or looking to graduate from YA to something a bit more sophisticated (but still fun!)
I'd also add that the narration was perfect- I barely thought about it at all, which is exactly what a fast paced story like this needs. I'm no expert, but the pidgin dialect sounded very natural and added to the quality of the performance.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for a free ALC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I absolutely LOVED this book. I adored everything about it, and I normally don't even like heist books.
First, I loved the worldbuilding. Kepler Station was an incredibly well thought-out setting. I loved the family aspect, loved the inclusion of Hawaiian pidgin, and last but not least, I loved how queer this was, especially the unapologetic butch representation. I found myself sad when I finished because I wanted to keep reading in this world and about these characters. I hope that the author releases more!

A killer queer sci-fi heist. A few slow spots in the middle, but I don’t even care. This is great and I can’t wait to recommend it to readers.