2.5-3ish...?

I wanted to like this so much more than I did. For a book whose description leaned heavily onto the heist, this book is primarily about romance and oh yeah there was a heist happening. I was hoping to get scheming and covert plots, but the plots were unfortunately so covert even the reader didn't witness them.

I could forgive that if I enjoyed the romances, but I really didn't. Somehow despite the book spending almost no time on the heist, I also felt that we didn't really get enough depth in any of the relationships. I think this was because, with 5 POV characters, we didn't spend enough time in any one person's head. Even when we got to see someone's thoughts for a bit of time, I think we just harped on the same one-two character traits and backstory points the entire time.

This book had a lot of pieces of a great story, but it ended up delivering very little because it tried to do so much.

I would have loved to love this. I'm always here for a gay space heist! But this didn't totally deliver.

I liked the set-up and the AI-run casino setting, and there are interesting elements in here, but this was much more focused on the characters' feelings than on anything to do with the heist. I still don't fully understand how the heist element resolved in the end, honestly. Having all the characters spend every chapter worrying that their love interest doesn't share their feelings would be pretty tedious on its own, but when we have POVs from everyone involved there's just no tension there because we know exactly what they're all thinking about one another.

I also found this to be kind of weird about sex. I liked that there are characters I read as demisexual and asexual, but I felt like a lot of effort went into making it clear that Psalome is not a sex worker. Psylina's insistence on sex with clients being a hard line for Psalome felt extra weird to me.

So there's not much of a heist, and the romances aren't all that satisfying, which doesn't leave us with much more than a fun premise. It's an ok read, but certainly not the gay space heist of my dreams.

A fun romp of a book! This book had me at "queer sci-fi heist" and it did not disappoint. I was a little worried when I began that the rotating first-person POVs would throw me, but as I read I found that each individual character was distinct enough that I could tell who was narrating even without looking at their name at the top of the chapter. I loved the variety of the relationships the main characters displayed, the asexual and sapphic representation, and the handling of how romance and sex and consent can look so different to different people. All the characters were genuinely attentive to their partners' needs, even as they worked throughout the book to establish what their relationships could be. The heist part of the story was fun with lots of casino antics and enough suspense to keep me turning pages. Would recommend to sci-fi and romance readers alike.

Heist. Space. AI powered casino. Ocean 8.
The Elysium Heist had so much going for it, stakes are revealed right from the get go with everyone involved in the heist holding their secrets close to their hearts while attempting to work together to rob The Casino.

Unfortunately, the execution fell flat.

Working with five POVs would have been a great idea if the voice of each character were refined a little more. Instead, they mostly sound alike. And, it ended up spoon feeding most of the progression to the reader, failing to address how the characters felt about the actual progression, especially when it came to the subplot.

The story was fun, and I'd recommend it for a quick read. Though this could have been a way better story.

Thank you to NetGalley and Y.M. Resnik for an ARC of this novel in exchange for my thoughts on it!

The premise of an interstellar casino was so interesting I had to pick this book up, but the actual payout fell short for me.

We were following so many characters throughout the book that they were functionally all very one dimensional. Even with such a short page count we could have gotten a bit more in depth into character motivations beyond the Single Character Trait that each of the characters were assigned. So many of their POVs were taken up by a feedback loop of being in love with each other (even if they’d only known each other a day or two) and refusing to say or do anything about it. I have nothing against a slow burn, but if the first pov out the gate is about how they’re in love, there’s really nowhere to build from there if they’re unwilling to act on it in a meaningful way.

I also found that I had to suspend my disbelief somewhat to accept the premise of the heist. I find it hard to believe that once the tapes were released that this man would own up to the crime of releasing intimate materials or the theft of very expensive earrings just to verify the validity of the video. I feel like the plot to steal back the earrings was sort of shoe horned in to connect to Kiyo’s Single Character Trait of being an heiress to a jewelry empire.

Overall, the story was enjoyable, but pretty simplistic. It definitely could have used a couple more rounds of reviews to tighten up some of the plot point logistics and flesh out the characterization.

The Elysium Heist is centered around a hodge podge group of women who are all trying to make amends with their pasts and change their futures. Each character in this book is so fastly different from each other that it makes the differing views easy to read. Every character has so much depth and the author did an amazing job of fitting so much backstory in to the book without it feeling clunky. I am really hoping that we see future books by this author that focus on what the futures of this group look like.

got this arc from netgalley!

delightful!!! honestly that's the most important thing to know, this book is fast-paced, energetic, and loads of fun. there's some intense emotional stuff in there as well, but the ratio (to me) definitely leaned more into the crazy heist (in space!!!) energy. super fun, compelling cast of characters, i just wish ilaria had been allowed to blow stuff up some more.

i have some minor complaints, but they are super persnickety. there were some instances, particularly during emotional moments, where there was a strong case of People Don't Talk Like That. also, why was everyone like 20. these people are not twenty-year olds. maybe i am just old now? because of the fast pace, some of the resolution felt a little rushed, but honestly that fits with the way the rest of the book was written so i guess i am fine with it. ilaria was a bit too passive for me, because why would you make a character whose whole deal is exploding stuff and then not let her explode anything? cowardly, that's what that is.

but really, this is a super fun read that really grabs you and takes you on the journey with it. an excellent addition to the heist genre (trope?)

DNF at 25%

I couldn't get past the weak writing and characterization. The book is split into 5 different POVs, all written in first person, and I don't think anyone can make that work. Or maybe I'm just not the target audience for this book.

This is such an ambitious book, and there’s so much to like about it! I actually thought the first five chapters — each of which is from a different main character’s POV — was an astonishing feat! It introduced each character and their relationships to each other so well, and built out the sci-fi world, and unfurled the plot in such an engaging way. Unfortunately, a book this length can’t really do everything it needs to do with five main characters all narrating their own story. Both the world building and the character growth suffer. That maybe wouldn’t have been the case if each character didn’t have a Major Thing they were working through: being in recovery for addiction, being the victim of revenge porn and blackmail, being an asexual recluse in love with an AI, being a sheltered religious acolyte from a misogynistic hellscape, being sold into (essentially) sex work. It’s too much, so none of the stories move past the surface, so the resolutions don’t feel super satisfying. I’m also not sure this is the exact moment in time to have a sentient AI saving the day, and probably it’s never the right time to have an asexual person making a 1:1 comparison to herself and a robot because she doesn’t desire sex. I wanted to love this. If it’d been five books, or even a trilogy, each narrated by a different character, I think it could have worked a lot better. I did enjoy it! It’s a bunch of queer women taking back their power and doing crime! It just needed more space for more story, and some finesse around sensitive issues.

✨ ARC Review | Thank you @solarisbooks for the ARC! ✨

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐

I was so excited to dive into this book, especially with its promise of a sapphic space heist. While the story is intriguing and the writing style itself is smooth and easy to read, I found myself struggling to connect with the characters. Each chapter is told from a different first-person perspective, but unfortunately, all the voices blended together. The characters thought, spoke, and reacted in such similar ways that I often forgot whose chapter I was reading. Distinct personalities are so important in multi-POV stories, and I wish there had been more differentiation here.

I also felt the story could have benefited from a third-person perspective, as juggling multiple first-person voices is a tough skill to master—and in this case, it didn’t quite land.

Plot-wise, I expected a high-stakes, twisty space heist, but the tension never really built up. The characters, who start as strangers, immediately understand each other with little effort, and there’s not much “figuring each other out” or planning the heist together. Interactions felt minimal, and the plot lacked the complexity and suspense I was hoping for.

Also, one character’s relationship with the casino’s AI was…unexpected, and honestly, a bit odd in my opinion.

That said, the story was enjoyable overall, and the ending was satisfying enough to leave me with a positive impression. It’s not a bad book by any means—I did enjoy the ride—but it felt a bit empty and missed the mark on character depth and plot development.

If you’re looking for a quick, easy-to-read sci-fi adventure, this might still be worth checking out. But if you’re hoping for a character-driven, twisty heist with lots depth, you might find yourself wanting more.

I wanted to like this book so much more than I did -- it's a sapphic space heist, what's there not to like? But nothing worked for me here, and what should have been a fun, exciting novel was instead a slog to get through.

To start, splitting the novel into five perspectives wasn't the way to go. None of the characters got the proper attention they deserved development wise because there were four other characters. It was also difficult to differentiate between the POVs. If you didn't read the name at the beginning of the chapter, then it would be hard to figure out whose perspective it was from, since all of the voices sounded the same.

The romances progressed too quickly and were too insta-love for me. I'm not a fan of love at first sight, which was essentially the main focus of one of the three romances. In general, all three of the romances lacked depth and chemistry. This can likely be attributed to the overabundance of POVs, since none of the characters got proper development that they should have over the course of the novel.

I also struggled with the overall narrative and heist plot. It was all very straight-forward and there wasn't any mystery to it. It played out how I thought that it would and then it was over. It left me wanting more, which seemed to be a recurring theme with this novel.

Earlier this spring, I read a very queer, very Jewish, very cute short story in the 2022 We’re Here anthology by indie publisher, Neon Hemlock. The author was one Y. M. Resnik, and the story was The Chavrusah Worlds of Possibility. When I saw that her debut novel was up for grabs on NetGalley, I instantly smashed the “Request” button.

The Elysium Heist is a delightful, queer, clever sci-fi casino heist that has been accurately described as a “Sapphic Ocean’s Eleven in space” (Eli Snow). There really is no better way to describe it, and I can’t begin to recommend it enough. Resnik’s prose is witty and hilarious while addressing topics like sobriety, bodily autonomy, faith, and ace-spectrum sexuality with frank gravity.

There is also an extremely spicy sex scene that. Wow. All my thumbs up.

Resnik is definitely an author I’m going to be following very closely. Her stories check all my boxes, and I’m excited to see what else she has in store for us.

Extended review to be linked at a later date.

Thank you NetGalley and Rebellion for a copy of this ARC.

Ocean's 8, queer women and space? Yes please! Positives first there are a variety of queer representation which I love to see. It's a quick and easy read. That being said the 5 pov's all written in first person can get very confusing. Also the heist itself... I had no ideas what was going on

2.75 stars

I love me a good heist. Ocean's 11 and 8 are both among my favorite movies, so when I saw the description I was 100% in. Unfortunately, so much of a heist is all about its execution, and this one fell flat for me.

A good heist is only as good as its members. This one has Kiyo, a disgraced heiress to a precious stones and jewelry empire. She's the financer of the operation, but she only has access to her personal money, as she awaits her inheritance when she hits 21 years old. She is in love with an infamous gambler and card counter, who now goes by the alias of Finley. Finley was born into a family of gamblers and entertainers, and has been playing cards since she was a toddler. She is, apparently, unbeatable. However, she battles an addiction to drugs and alcohol that Kiyo helped wrench her out of. Then we've got the demolitions expert, Ilaria, who is a sheltered girl who doesn't understand the glitz and glam of the casino world. Finally, we've got two sisters - Psalome, who is a "Dazzler" or a card dealer/hostess that is contracted at The Casino until her debts are paid off (incrued by her father) and her sister Psylina, a hacker/computer extraordinaire who also works at The Casino, and is, in fact, in love with The Casino's AI. Just go with it.

Alright, so what's the mark? A bad bad man named Shaul, who has blackmail material on Kiyo that would make it impossible for her to take over her empire. Coincidentally, he is also a bad husband, who abused and controlled Ilaria, and she had to fake her death to escape him. Kiyo wants the blackmail material, and Ilaria wants a divorce so she can move on with her life. Shaul happens to be at The Casino for a gambling tournament, and they hope to recruit Psalome to help with the con. The broad strokes are they hope to distract him with Psalome's beauty and Finley's card counting skills, while they steal the blackmail material and without his leverage on Kiyo, Kiyo is free to help Ilaria get what she needs. They want to tempt Psalome with the money she needs to get out of her debt to The Casino. However, Psalome can't be bought off with money... but will help for Ilaria. Psylina is skeptical of the entire thing, but throws in her support with her sister.

Ok, so that's the setup. And that's all good, if I had stopped here, I might have given it 4 stars. Despite the grammatical errors, rotating first-person POV, and straightforward, bland writing, my love for a heist would have overruled it all. But then the heist actually begins. And it genuinely is... underwhelming. It doesn't make much sense, it is not clever or interesting, and the girls mess up rather spectacularly along the way. Not only that, apparently everyone has a bad case of unrequited love, and we spend a LOT of time with each POV pining over their respective love of their lives.

And then the real problem begins. The problem with rotating first person is that we, as the reader, learns everything about the narrator. In order for their to be a heist then, at least some of the narrators have to not know what's going on - or else the reader also knows everything ... which is boring. A heist is supposed to be exciting and engaging, with the reader not knowing exactly how things will unfold and then being delighted by all the hidden steps to arrive at the final destination. The only way to achieve that with a first person point of view is to have the character (or characters) unaware of what is happening. Which then just makes the character feel dumb and extraneous. So in the end, I read more about some self-absorbed girls who were not-so-secretly in love with another girl than I did about the heist- which was actually pretty nonsensical.

And let's not talk about the bad bad villain. It just fell apart at the end. Like we started a shaky house of cards with the foundation, gave up halfway and just chucked cards at it, and it all fell over in a disappointing and limp pile of cards. Thanks to NetGalley for the advanced review copy! All opinions expressed are my own.

This is billed as Ocean's 8 in space with lesbians, and this novel really nails that! Five separate women, all of whom get POV chapters, want a chance to take back what should've been theirs: each wants her own life back, in some way or shape. But none of these five can agree on anything, and trusting one another? Ha!

The Elysium Heist is definitely a character-driven heist novel, so those of you seeking full on thrills with no emotional beats, keep moving along. For those who love when characters are more than their actions, this is definitely a book you'll want to read. I loved each character, and her reasons for trusting (momentarily) or distrusting each of the other women is well-grounded and believable. The plan to rob the AI casino is a decidedly bold one, but also the only available means open to them.

Honestly, I say it's character-driven, but one of the joys of this book is that it neatly balances character and plot, so much so that I was compelled read and finished this book in a flash. I didn't want to put it down!

As for how it pans out...I was a little dismayed at first by the conclusion, and the way that the heist went sideways. Not that it DID go sideways (which, let's be honest, we all know it's going to do that, right?), but the manner in which it did just threw me, and left me a touch dissatisfied. However, I also couldn't stop thinking about the book, and my odd reaction to it, and after a day I figured out the "why" of my reaction, and realized that actually, it was a PERFECT ending. None of these women are criminals, none of them wanted to grab $$ or glory--they only wanted their own freedoms. So the ending I at first disliked became a resounding "oh!" as my delayed enlightenment occurred, and now I'm rating this 5 stars.

A fun and cozy story full of twists.
Every character feels so unique and detailed.
A sweet treat for the sci-fi and romance lovers

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

I asked for this book because the description sold me a queer heist novel featuring a group of women who were setting out to rob an AI- Controlled casino. The book starts with much reminding us how absolutely hot and talented and desired all of these characters are to at least one other person (if not multiple) and, in many cases, how little they think of themselves and oh, how woe is me that their chosen interest won't be interested back-- light on the heist.

Which is not to say this is a bad book, but if you're looking for a high-stakes and exciting heist, you're not exactly going to get it here. If you're looking for a sapphic romance full of yearning in a sci-fi setting, you may just find this book is exactly what you're hoping for! This book absolutely has its audience, and I'm sad to say it is not me.

To speak positively about the queer representation, I really did like that there was a variety of sexual identities at play here, if all sapphic leaning in one way or another.

In short: read if you want a lot of sapphic yearning, skip if you're here for an interesting heist.

This is a delightful, fun romp of a book! Five women, each with their own baggage and hopes, meet to pull off a heist in an AI-controlled casino (and one of them might just be in love with the casino's AI...). The characters are unfailingly kind to one another, which feels like such a gift (when much of real life right now is heavy and unkind). This is the kind of book where everyone gets what they deserve (in the most satisfying ways). I'll be hoping for more from Resnik!

SPOILERS BELOW

Disaster lesbians* attempt a casino heist in space; it gets distinctly M-rated between a couple of them, and all the problems with the fairly simple heist are because the characters have personal issues. Also, the heist ends up not making a lick of sense. But the journey is reasonably entertaining.

*Technically, one lesbian, two bisexuals, one pansexual and an asexual, all women within a couple of years either way of 20 years old. They are:

- Kiyo, a brittle heiress to a jewellery fortune, who's being extorted by Shaul, the villain and mark, over a sex tape (think Paris Hilton, but if the boyfriend who secretly recorded the tape died on screen through an interaction between a drug he was on and her body paint). She is the client and funder.
- Finley, a recovering alcoholic (recovering thanks to Kiyo) and professional gambler. In mutual thought-to-be-unrequited longing with Kiyo, who is understandably gun-shy when it comes to sex since her previous experience.
- Psalome, a Dazzler (casino employee). She's theoretically available for clients to have sex with, as well as to have her deal for them and provide various other forms of entertainment, but in practice she doesn't have sex with them because she wants to reserve that for someone she cares about, and the Casino is very strict about consent (and yet it's often implied or stated that she's very skilled at sex, even though she's had, it emerges, only one previous partner and isn't that old). She's working in the casino to pay off a huge debt left by her father. It's never made clear why she feels she has to do this.
- Psylina, Psalome's sister. A hacker, asexual but not aromantic, and in a relationship with the casino's AI, who she refers to as her "joyfriend". She's been trying, unsuccessfully, to get around the AI's programming to allow it to forgive her sister's debt. The AI has multiple bodies which are often referred to as clones, but are actually androids, to fulfil the role of casino security.
- Ilaria, Shaul's wants-to-be-ex-wife. They come from a strict Jewish planet where only men can grant divorces, and he won't, even though he doesn't care about her at all; it's part of his controlling personality. (Shaul, the only significant male character, is not only an unmixedly vile human being but also not very smart.) Kiyo has helped her fake her death, both so that she can escape and also so that she can help them get Kiyo's heirloom earrings back from Shaul, since they would validate the sex tape as not a deepfake; this is the heist. Ilaria is in mutual thought-to-be-unrequited longing with Psalome, whose exact type she coincidentally is - which is fortunate for getting Psalome to sign on to be part of the heist, though she might well have done it just for the promise of Kiyo paying off her remaining debt.

A lot of the book is more about the romantic angst and the characters working through their considerable damage than it is about the heist, so if you're not up for that, this isn't your book. The heist itself is relatively straightforward: manipulate a poker tournament in which the stakes put up are jewellery, and in which Shaul will put up the McGuffin earrings. The dealer wears all the stakes during the game, and Psalome is the dealer in the final. Then they just have to swap the earrings out somehow. (The actual heist turns out to be more complicated than this, of course.)

Their plan for doing this earring swap is far from clear for most of the book, and then when it comes to it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. <spoiler>Instead of the stake jewellery going into a secure safe as would be the case in any normal casino, Psalome is simply allowed to take the pieces with her when she returns to her room. She doesn't do the switch in her room, which is explicitly not surveilled by the Casino, because "the Casino would find out" (how?). What she does instead is to swap them in the corridor instead, in the presence of multiple Casino androids, in a set of circumstances which are specifically being recorded - it's a key plot point that a recording is being made. Shaul doesn't notice, because he's distracted by her being naked at the time, though it seems unlikely that even someone as stupid and lustful as him wouldn't notice her switching earrings. But the Casino isn't a man, and wouldn't be distracted - yet apparently doesn't notice either. I found it completely implausible. </spoiler>

Most, though certainly not all, of the commas are in the right place, but the vast majority of the apostrophes are not, and if I had a bingo card with every error you can commit with an apostrophe, it would have been mostly full by the end of the book. Some idioms are fumbled, some words are confused with other similar words, and there's at least one typo that should have been caught by spellcheck. I've seen far worse; the issues aren't constant, and, as always, I give the disclaimer that I saw a pre-publication version which may not represent the final text.

More significant for me were the issues of plausibility. I've already mentioned the biggest one in spoiler tags above, but it's also implausibly easy to avoid security cameras in the space casino. The casino AI doesn't twig to things it really should have twigged to. Fire in a space station is said at one point to be unthinkable, but there's plenty of smoking going on, and the Dazzlers sometimes set cocktails on fire, and in general fire seems to be a lot more thinkable than it in fact should be. And <spoiler>as part of the conclusion where the supposed plan was not the actual plan, Finley is arrested, in order (by a hack swapping the identity of two spaceships, I think) to get her into Shaul's ship to take his stuff, even though it's been established that he's moved it out of his ship into a secure area that couldn't be broken into and in which you definitely would not confine a prisoner unsupervised<spoiler>.

It's lacking in polish, in short; needs a more knowledgeable development editor, a continuity editor, and a more careful copy editor who's good with apostrophes and idioms. But it shows potential, and even though the heist of the title was overshadowed by the characters' personal and interpersonal issues and ended up full of plot holes, I found it an enjoyable read on the whole. It's good enough, just barely, to make my 2025 recommendation list, though it's right at the bottom.

I first went into this for the sapphic sci-fi but omg it was so much. A sapphic sci-fi CASINO HEIST. I just finished neon nights so I was in a casino las Vegas ish mode lol but make it IN SPACE this was such a fun story I flew through it. Normally sci-fi world building takes longer for me to get into right away but this you can jump right in easy peasy. Pit story begins with our FMC she is one of the highest paid hostess at the casino she is tick their due to her inherited debt from her deadbeat dad. The only way to escape is to try to find a way to rob the casino. Then she’s home free. Part of her escape team is a disgraced heiress seeking to rescue her family business, a recovering alcoholic card counter, a religious Jew whose abuse husband refuses to grant her a divorce, and Psalome younger sister who is dating the casinos AI long story lol. Sparks fly with with the Jewish wife and Psalome starting chaos with her husband. Just a story you need to read 🥹 so much happens it’s a must for any sci-fi and queer romance lover.