The Inheritance Games meets Ocean's Eleven is a very apt tagline for this story.
It did grip me pretty much from the beginning, with lots of twists and turns I wasn't expected... OK, maybe some I expected, but not always in the way they panned out.

There were a lot of characters in this book, so I feel we only got to see surface level of most of them, missing out on the emotional anxst I expect (and want) in a YA novel, but I did enjoy the representation of different parts of the world.

I think it will make an excellent movie!

Twisty and gripping, Thieves Gambit was an emotional rollercoaster of a read and kept me guessing to the last page. Rosalyn Quest, Ross to those who know her, is a stellar heroine. She’s got plenty of thieving skills, is an expert at getting out of tight spaces and packed with talent, yet she is also vulnerable and as such, is a thoroughly believable character. Her supporting cast in the high stakes invitation-only Thieves Gambit are equally well drawn, each displaying different talents. This story takes readers all over the world as the quest becomes more and more challenging for the competitors. With plit twists galore, this story was hard to put down.

Thieves' Gambit is like a cross between Squid Games and Throne Of Glass.
It was a competition and was thrilling to read! The gambit is a competition about... thievery haha
It will determine the best thief and all their skills are tested in order to determine a winner.
It's also a game of trust and deceit which always makes things far more interesting!
I really enjoyed this! It was fast paced and had an amazing range of characters.
Some characters I loved, others I LOATHED and many I was skeptical off!
I'm very much looking forward to the second book!

I couldn't and wouldn't put this book down. Not only was the premise so so interesting, but I thought that all the characters were super fun and at time very relatable.

In some ways it reminded me about Six of Crows because while they are in this competition of thieving heists as individuals, the found family aspect was great! The whole story caught and kept my attention throughout it all! The lil romance, though a little predictable, had me swooning and rooting for the characters.

A brilliant book and I can't wait for the next one after reading THAT ENDING!!

I. was. hooked.

Right from the blurb, before I even started the book, I was intrigued! 'The inheritance Games meets Ocean’s Eleven' couldn't be more accurate! I love action, and I love mystery, so when the two genres came together for Thieves' Gambit, I knew that I was in for a treat!

Rosalyn Quest, seventeen year old mastermind and active member of the Quest family of thieves, is thrown into the deep end when her mother is abducted. She needs to find enough money - and fast - if she wants to pay a ransom to find her mother. How does she do this, you may ask? Well, she enters the Thieves' Gambit in an attempt to win the prize!

The book was a very interesting and unique concept - something that I had never read about before. The writing style kept me intrigued and on-edge throughout the entire novel, and overall, was a very entertaining read. I enjoyed the book, and am excited to know that it will eventually become a film adaptation! Overall, a solid 4/5 stars from me.

Thank you so much Netgalley and Simon & Schuster for the opportunity to read and review the advanced reader copy of Thieves' Gambit.

I know so many people have been loving this book lately, but I have quite mixed feelings on this one. I really enjoyed the concept of this book and I found the storyline to be really engaging! The plot kept me on my feet, and I didn’t guess any of the plot twists, especially towards the end. It was fast paced, high stakes, had lots of twists and turns, and overall was just a quick and fun read. I really liked the fact that the cast of characters was super diverse, and I found the challenges and ‘phases’ in the book quite entertaining.

The one thing I had an issue with here is the way the author wrote the characters. This is never usually something that bothers me in books, but it really got to me in this case. If I’m being 100% honest, it felt like the characters were written by an adult who was trying too hard to relate to the younger generation. The use of ‘trendy’ slang terms in the characters dialogue made me cringe and it really took me out of the story. I’m only a couple years older than the main characters in this book and the way they spoke just felt really juvenile to me, and it made the characters a bit insufferable.

Overall, I would definitely recommend this book to anyone looking for a high stakes YA thriller/mystery. I’m still curious about what happens next in this story as it ends on a cliffhanger, but I definitely would say that it’s better suited for a younger audience.

One of the best YA thrillers I’ve read for a while. The story grabbed me from the very first page and it did not let me go until the very last page. And what an ending! Not a cliffhanger, but certainly set things up for a second book.

Seventeen year old Rosalyn (Ross) is the last member of her world renowned family of thieves, who steal from the rich and famous. Brought up with expectation she will join the family ‘business’ Ross is almost proficient on all aspects of being a master-thief. The number one rule - trust no one. While having an argument with her mother their yacht is attacked and her mother is kidnapped. When the ransom notice comes through the only way Ross can raise the funds is to win the Thieves’ Gambit – an invitation only deadly competition for the world’s best thieves, where the victor is granted one wish. Ross had no intention of joining in, she wants to live a normal life and planned on running off to a Summer Camp, but now needs must means she accepts the invitation.  

To win, Ross must outwit all of her backstabbing competitors, including her childhood arch-nemesis. All the teen competitors are from the world’s leading thief families and are very diverse characters who cover many cultures, there is even an Aussie! Once they all meet, the race is on and the teens have to travel the world to complete missions, either as a teams or against each other. Ross doesn’t want to team up, or make friends, she is there to win. But as the stakes get higher, so do the difficulties, and tensions rise. Soon Ross decides that maybe she actually has to work with some of the others to get through. But all her life she has been told to trust no one, so how can she work with anyone - and how can she learn who to trust?

There is adventure, danger, betrayal and non-stop action right up to the big finale scene. Can’t wait to see if there is a second book.

Wow!! What a ripping page turner of a read. I loved the fast pace and excitement with every turn of the page. This was my first heist type scenario in a book and I absolutely loved it.
It kept me engaged enough to finish in almost one sitting, so you can believe the hype on Thieves'Gambit it is one you need to add to your reading list immediately.
Thank you to NetGalley for the early reading copy, it was one I devoured with gusto and would recommend to anyone who will listen a big 5 stars!!

<b><i>"Thieves', plural possessive? It was an oxymoron. Thieves just don't get together."</i></b>

Finished this in less than a day, it was completely unputdownable! It needs to be a movie and I need a sequel yesterday!

Roslyn (Ross) Quest - what a badass name! - has been trained as a master thief her whole life, and taught that she can trust no-one but her mother. But when her mother is taken captive in a job gone wrong, Ross is forced to participate in the Gambit - an elite heist game run by an unknown organisation - and try to claim the ultimate prize that will get her mother back. Ross is thrown into the competition with a mixed bag of other thieves, all gunning for the prize, and she knows she can trust none of them, especially her arch-nemesis Noelia.

I loved Ross. I really felt her struggle of trying to get out from under her mum's control and have some freedom for a change, but then the crushing guilt she felt when her mum was kidnapped. She was a sassy Bahamian girl and I loved the way she spoke and narrated the story. I really enjoyed getting to know the other characters and all their special quirks and skills, though it's hard not to spend the entirety of this type of story looking out for betrayal - which of course there was.

This fantastic YA heist story would be great for fans of movies like Bond, Ocean's Eleven, Kingsmen, and books like Four Dead Queens or Six of Crows that keep you guessing and have all the cool tricks.

Rosalyn "Ross" Quest is a seventeen-year-old master thief, who wanted nothing more than to go to school and be an ordinary teenager. Her plans to run away from home are foiled when she is invited to join a high-stakes thieving competition, and her mother gets kidnapped. Accepting the invitation to the competition is the only way to save her mother: the kidnappers want a billion dollars, and if she wins the competition, she can give them just that.

I enjoyed this one way more than I thought I was going to! I loved the rivalry and the high stakes that the premise of the story created. It is super fast paced, with creative, competitive teenagers taking the reins. I enjoyed the character dynamics as well; they're teenagers who aren't completely jaded with life, but know that the people they're surrounded by are deceptive and want to win the competition at any cost.

Some plot points require you to buy-in to the story it's trying to tell, and require a bit of suspension of belief on occasions. There are so many plot twists revealed at the end that you need to keep up with, but most make sense if you were paying attention.

Thank you to Simon & Schuster for an advanced copy of this one! All opinions are my own.

This is a Young Adult novel, first in a new series and it is receiving a lot of hype. Apparently the film rights have already been sold.

We are introduced to Ross Quest, seventeen years old and already a very active member of the legendary Quest family of thieves. When her mother is abducted the only way she can find the ransom money is to win the Thieves' Gambit, an international competition of heists and cons.

It was an interesting story and an entertaining read. However for me it was another example of a book being over hyped. It was not outstandingly clever or original even though it was a good read. It will probably be a very, very good movie.

What do you get when you mix Hunger Games + Six of Crows + The Inheritance Games + Oceans Eleven? ~ Thieves Gambit ~
Thieves Gambit follows seventeen year old master thief, Ross Quest, who is raised by a a family of legendary thieves. When her mother is kidnapped, the only chance she has to save her is to win a deadly competition - the Thieves Gambit - to be granted a wish. Cue the betrayal, ulterior motives, backstabbing and secrets against childhood nemesis and cute boys.

🎲 HEISTS
🎲 Manipulation + Cons
🎲 Betrayal
🎲 Diverse characters

"These are real people, Devore." I felt my lips quiver. "Real people. Lives --"
"So are we."

This was such an action packed, fast-paced YA read, and I literally couldn't put it down.
Thank you NetGalley and Penguin Teen for the ARC!

This was okay.

It’s described as The Hunger Games meets Ocean’s 11 and I can see it although it doesn’t really have the high stakes of the Hunger Games as it feels like most people who don’t make the cut just go home. Some people leave before our protagonist and therefor the reader, even see them.

Rosalyn has been raised by a single mother into a crime family. They specialise in stealing things, they’re quite legendary in thieving circles. Rosalyn has been brought up ‘in the family business’ and at 17 or so, she’s got a lot of skills and knows how to set up and execute an operation. However she also longs for a normal life – she wants to go to college. But her mother is very much of the mind that family sticks together and you never trust anyone except family. When Rosalyn is invited to a mysterious competition she doesn’t intend to compete. She has other plans. But then a job goes wrong and Rosalyn’s mother is kidnapped and her life on the line. The winner of the Thieves’ Gambit gets a wish and Rosalyn desperately needs that wish to free her mother. So she enters and from there, her and the other competitors are given tasks and missions to complete – sometimes alone, sometimes working in groups. This challenges Rosalyn’s trust no one ethos but if she wants to advance in the competition, she’s going to have to learn how to play well with others.

If you can suspend your disbelief about the skills of these mere teenagers and also the money and power behind the organisation running it all, this is quite a fun ride. Rosalyn (who also goes by Ross) has in some ways, had a very privileged life. Her mother is very wealthy, thanks to her escapades and they live on an island in the Bahamas somewhere, travelling by private jet and the like but Ross is also very lonely and really in some ways, just wants to be a normal teenage girl with friends and go to college. Experience the outside world. But things change and she has to enter the competition and she’s in it to win. The heists are imaginative and fun and the first one feels like it has enough danger to keep you invested in the outcome. There’s an ethnically diverse mix of characters and the wariness and competition between them is fun as is their needing to put that aside to work together whenever the organisers tell them that they have to.

However (and maybe this is just because I am not YA age anymore) the book telegraphs so loudly that THIS THING IS NOT GOING TO HAPPEN, THE PERSON IS SAYING SO MANY TIMES THAT THEY WILL NOT DO THIS THING that immediately I knew it was going to happen. Like it was just the very epitome of saying it too much. So I immediately knew when it was going to happen. It was just too obvious. It didn’t help that I just didn’t like that character either. I never found them trustworthy (perhaps by their very proclamation of being so) and I didn’t find them charming or fun or likeable and I was like girl, run to Ross in my head every time she started to waver. Also the way that person takes rejection? Red flag. Red flag.

Also a bait and switcheroo happens off page which is weird, because everything else is included on the page or in Ross’ internal narrative so the only reason that particular thing isn’t, is to trick the reader but it just stood out.

All in all this was a fun way to spend a few hours and I think if you like books that are action packed, full of adventure but with (relatively) low stakes, then you’ll probably enjoy this. But I think the fast pace and constant movement means that character development does suffer a little bit and the fact that there’s rather a large cast of characters to begin with means that most of them are just cardboard cutouts on the page. There will be a sequel and I will probably read it just to see what Ross ends up doing because she got absolutely blindsided.

6/10

This book is pitched as the Inheritance Games meets Oceans Eleven and OMG it was definitely like that! Even with a less high-stake Squid Game kind of vibe! It had heists spanning across continents, instantly lovable side characters, betrayals and international thieving families.

I LOVE the Ocean's movies and so I knew that I had to pick this one up! Also heists are some of my absolute favourite things to read about!! These ones were so well thought out! And while most of the twists were kinda predictable it was balanced out by the variety of places and plans that were in this book!

I just really loved it! it was a quick and entertaining read that reminded me why heists are so amazing to read about! of course there were some negatives, but this was the kind of book that you can just look over those negatives because even though you might know where the story ends up there is just so much more to be discovered on the way!


I can see why this book is already being turned into a movie! Coupled with the heists the great characters also pulled this book together. Everyone in a thieving group has their own abilities and this one was no different! Mylo was amazing and so was Kyung-soon I loved how the author wrote their characters and even gave all the other competitors their own personalities, although I would have loved to see them be involved a little bit more.

The whole, not trusting anyone was a little cliche but it's always so great to see them open up to people and this book even hinted at the beginning of found family which I LOVE.

If you're like me and love YA, heists, found family and quick reads full of secrets, betrayals and sneaky but really cool in-depth plans that we could never pull off, I highly recommend you give this one a go!

Thanks so much to Netgalley and the publisher! I was given an eArc but this in no way impacted my review!

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an ARC of Thieves Gambit.

If I could give it more than 5 stars I would. I LOVED THIS BOOK. It's the first YA novel I've picked up that I've been genuinely excited about.

I loved the plot, the backstabbing, the reluctant friendships that formed, the romance and THAT ENDING. I need book two right now!!!

This story centres around Rosalyn (Ross) Quest and her participation, against other top thieves of her age, in The Thieves Gambit. Daring and dangerous tasks are to be completed to crown the winner, and Rosalyn needs to win this competition to save her mothers life…

It was a bit of a slow start for me, as it wasn’t really clear where this narrative was going, however, as the story develops, you realise that this is just building to an explosive finale.

Ross is an interesting (if not always relatable) character and you can clearly see where her challenges, when dealing with others, comes from. She’s been told, by her mother, to trust no one - and there are so many double-crosses in this book you are never sure who’s a friend or an enemy…

A fully engrossing read and I hope that there’s more coming for Rosalyn Quest!

Thank you to the author, the publisher and NetGalley for the advance copy of this book. All thoughts are my own.

Thank you, NetGalley, Simon & Schuster Australia and Kayvion Lewis for providing me with an eARC of Thieves Gambit for review.

Wow. This book was outstanding. I thoroughly enjoyed this read. It is such an amazing opener to a YA series.

The suspense throughout the entire story is amazing. All the twists and turns - living. This book completely disappeared from me.

Rosalyn is amazing. I was engaged in all of her journey. Loved it. Completely recommend.

Thieves' Gambit grabbed me right from the first page and I didn't want to stop reading. I loved the concept of a competition for professional thieves. The story is young adult, with the young thieves being in their late teens, but I love a good YA book. Ross Quest has been bought up to trust no one but another Quest. Due to certain circumstances, she agrees to enter the competition, where she has to decide if she is able to trust others - keeping in mind the others are also thieves! Stakes are high and during the Gambit Ross learns what type of person she really is. I loved all the thieving games and the mind games that went along with it. Really fun read!

Thoroughly enjoyable heist adventure with some excellent twists and turns. Fans of The Inheritance Game and Hunger Games should definitely give this one a go.

This was a fast-paced YA thriller with a cracking plot and a high-stakes competition that keeps the pace propulsive. I particularly loved the diverse cast and the found family aspects. The relationships between the cast - with their many complex, layered interactions - and a protagonist who has difficulty trusting or getting close to others, made for some really fascinating character studies! I had a lot of fun reading this - many thanks to Simon and Schuster Australia for the ARC!