Great balance of adventure, mystery and personalities. Great way to introduce students to another way of life. Thank goodness there was no romance!

We need more books like this book!

Tiny Girl lives life on her own terms. A refugee living in Kenya, she is attempting to avenge the murder of her mother, while keeping her little sister safe. She thinks she has it all figured out, until an unexpected reunion with an old friend causes her to go seeking answers she didn't know she needed.

It gets a bit YA Romance-y for my taste at points (Is there some law that boys and girls cannot be just friends in YA Books?) but on the whole it's an interesting read full of diverse, interesting characters, that keeps you guessing until the very end.

I would highly recommend this book to folks who like thriller-y mysteries.

Several years of living rough as a member of a Kenyan street gang has turned Tina into an accomplished thief. On the night she's about to pull off her most important heist, the one that will expose her mother's murderer, Tina does the unthinkable. She gets caught. Now, with time running out, she makes a dangerous trip back to the country she and her mother fled, the Democratic Republic of Congo, in an effort to uncover her mother's secrets and exact the revenge Tina has planned for years. What she learns will call into doubt her own self perception and jeopardize the lives of those she holds dear.

The City of Saints and Thieves casts an unflinching look at the effects of war and political strife on citizens, especially the women who are preyed upon by both militia and rebels. Recommend to teen readers looking for a gritty, action-oriented thriller with a multicultural cast and a third world setting.

CITY OF SAINTS & THIEVES by Natalie C. Anderson was released in January and deserves the high level of praise it has received, including from well-known and award winning authors like Tara Sullivan (The Bitter Side of Sweet), Francisco X. Stork (Marcelo in the Real World - which some of our English classes read) and Ashley Hope Perez (Out of Darkness, just nominated for the Abe Lincoln Award). Natalie Anderson's debut novel tells the story of Tina (Tiny Girl) who escaped from the Congo with her mother almost a decade ago. For a while Tina had a protected life, serving as playmate and companion for the son of the Greyhill family where her mother worked as a maid. But her mother was murdered and so for the last five years Tiny Girl has been surviving on the streets as a thief and member of the Goondas, a local gang in Sangui City, Kenya.

Tiny Girl blames Mr. Greyhill for her mother's death and desperately wants revenge (dirt, money, blood is her mantra) so she patiently plots and breaks into the estate – only to be caught. That leads to deals and counter deals involving a memorable cast of characters – Boyboy, the computer nerd and hacker extraordinaire; Bug Eye, the gang's trainer and daily leader; Mr. Omoko, the ultimate cruel boss out for money; and Michael Greyhill, her former playmate. CITY OF SAINTS & THIEVES is most definitely a thriller, packed with questions of loyalty, plenty of suspense, and a courageous striving for survival. With so many starred reviews (Booklist, Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, Publishers Weekly, and School Library Journal), I won't be surprised to see CITY OF SAINTS & THIEVES as a nominee for Illinois' Abe Lincoln Award in a few years.

Until then, here is the just-released 2018 Abe Lincoln Award nominee list, including titles like Salt to the Sea, Those Shallow Graves, and March – Book One which we have reviewed previously. Still looking for more to read? Check out the suggestions for young adults and adults from Illinois Reads. Enjoy!

Links in the online review:
http://treviansbookit.blogspot.com/2016/10/the-bitter-side-of-sweet-by-tara.html
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6qALx3d7xJ0R3o1VkI0c1RxOUU/view
http://treviansbookit.blogspot.com/2016/02/salt-to-sea-by-ruth-sepetys.html
http://treviansbookit.blogspot.com/2015/11/two-new-authors-for-me.html
http://treviansbookit.blogspot.com/2017/01/march-book-one-by-john-lewis.html
http://illinoisreads.org/booksselectedfor2017/2017adult.html

Absolutely deserves all the praise! I was drawn into City of Saints and Thieves and will be looking for more from Anderson.

As a small child, Tina fled Congo with her mother Anju and relocated to (fictional) Sangui City, Kenya. There Anju found work as a maid at the estate of Mr. Greyhill, a mining executive with questionable business dealings. She was murdered in his home office several years later and the case was never solved. Now orphaned, Tina has nursed her thirst for revenge for years. She joins a street gang called the Goondas who provide a family of sorts and even a way to bring down Greyhill via a complicated heist. When the break-in is interrupted by Greyhill's son, Tina's childhood friend Michael, the two form an unlikely alliance in a quest for the truth about Anju's murder and Extracta Mining's role in trading conflict minerals. This powerful debut novel has an enticing premise, a richly realized setting, strong characters, and more than one big reveal. It's got elements of a murder mystery, techno-thriller, and refugee story rolled into one wonderfully complex page-turner!

stars for this intriguing book of the challenges of the strife in Africa for refugees.

A unique, compelling, and fast paced mystery with an extraordinary setting. This is a revenge story that will have teens on the edge of their seats and rooting for Tina. Can't wait to share this with my teen readers!

An action-packed debut, full of intrigue. This richly imagined mystery set in East Africa will have you on the edge of your seat.

Tina "Tiny Girl" Masika supports herself as a small and agile master thief with the Goondas, a gang of refugees like her in Sangui City, Kenya while plotting to avenge her mother's murder there. She returns to eastern Congo to investigate her mother's life and also learns about her own origins as well as the ethnic violence which motivated her mother to move to Kenya for a better life for her daughter.

The author has spent many years working with NGOs and the United Nations on refugee relief and brings this unfamiliar area to life in Tina's first-person narrative.

I received a copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

City of Saints & Thieves takes readers on a fast-paced adventure as Tina seeks revenge on the man she believes killed her mother. Set in the Congo and Kenya this mystery/adventure will draw readers in as they puzzle the before unknown details surrounding Tina's mother's death and their escape from the Congo years before.

Just finished reading this exciting, fast-paced YA fiction novel! I will be the first to admit that I haven't read a lot of novels that take place in Africa. I'm not sure if it's because they just aren't on my radar, if they don't pop up in my genres, or if it's just not an area that tends to interest me as much as others.
Anderson's book was awesome! She quickly plunges you into the culture and immerses you in Christina's life of stealing, belonging to a gang, and yearning for vengance. Christina's mother was murdered and she lives to avenge her mother's death. She even knows who did it. Or does she?

Join Christina as she navigates being a black teenage girl in places and with people that only see her for her age, skin color, and gender. Christina fights to protect her younger sister while attempting to fight back against the system that has ruined so many lives.

This is a story of family...good and evil. This is a story of revenge and doing what is right. At the end of the day, we all must live with our choices.

Anderson brings East Africa to vivid life in this novel that takes on tough issues like war, poverty and sexual assault with a clear and steady eye, with no pitying or pandering. Tina is a complex character, lovingly developed, who has dealt with the downturns in her life in a pragmatic way, and finds herself suddenly relying on the help of others to find her mother's killer and protect her family and friends. The author weaves slang into the conversations with ease, and depicts the African cityscape as it truly is for so many - not travel porn or dangerous exoticism, but simply home.

I was excited to read a YA contemporary set in an unstable African country. AND from the viewpoint of a regular citizen - not someone well connected or well educated. Tina is smart and resourceful but I found it refreshing that her advantages don't give her a huge edge over the obstacles she faces.

And they are many. Tina's mother is dead and Tina believes she's been murdered by her former employer - who also happens to be the father of Tina's half-sister. The two of them left the employer's house after the mother's dead, and while Tina put her sister in school, she herself took to the streets. Her smarts and quick agility catch the eye of a local warlord, whose aim to take down the employer align with Tina's. She's determined to find justice for her mother, and doing that means she has to find evidence that the employer killed her mother.

This journey takes her out of Sangui City and into the dangerous jungles, where law and order are replaced by strongmen. Her fearlessness, despite the overwhelming odds against her - she's a young, small girl in a country of amoral men who do unspeakable things to women - is sometimes a bit unbelievable. Honestly, it does seem more likely that a girl in Tina's position would retreat to the offered safety of school and education in hopes of just getting the heck out of there someday...but then there'd be no story. So her fearlessness is essential. It drives her to taking almost insane risks and she miraculously avoids rape and abduction in pursuing a shocking truth. Tina brings her friends - and the son of her employer, whose memories of his friendship with Tina keep him loyal - along for the ride. She finds an unlikely ally in one of her mother's childhood friends, whose violent history has kept her silent up until now.

I'm giving this four stars because I so appreciated the setting, the conflict and Tina's POV. And while I'm sure the American YA market demands its happy ending, I'd have loved a more ambiguous ending. Forgiveness doesn't require revenge, nor closure...and so often women in Tina's situation get neither. Yet moving on with their lives, healing despite the fact the perpetrator is unpunished, is more common than not. I think the author missed a chance to show this, while still revealing the prevailing strength of character in women like Tina.