Non-Review: Little Thieves (Little Thieves #1)

Little Thieves (Little Thieves #1)
By Margaret Owen

Published By: Hodder and Stoughton
Publication Date: October 19, 2021
Date Read: July 25, 2022
Genre: YA – Retellings
Source: Bought
Format: Hardback
Pages: 512

From Goodreads:
Once upon a time, there was a horrible girl…

Vanja Schmidt knows that no gift is freely given, not even a mother’s love–and she’s on the hook for one hell of a debt. Vanja, the adopted goddaughter of Death and Fortune, was Princess Gisele’s dutiful servant up until a year ago. That was when Vanja’s otherworldly mothers demanded a terrible price for their care, and Vanja decided to steal her future back… by stealing Gisele’s life for herself.

The real Gisele is left a penniless nobody while Vanja uses an enchanted string of pearls to take her place. Now, Vanja leads a lonely but lucrative double life as princess and jewel thief, charming nobility while emptying their coffers to fund her great escape. Then, one heist away from freedom, Vanja crosses the wrong god and is cursed to an untimely end: turning into jewels, stone by stone, for her greed.

Vanja has just two weeks to figure out how to break her curse and make her getaway. And with a feral guardian half-god, Gisele’s sinister fiancé, and an overeager junior detective on Vanja’s tail, she’ll have to pull the biggest grift yet to save her own life.

Margaret Owen, author of The Merciful Crow series, crafts a delightfully irreverent retelling of “The Goose Girl” about stolen lives, thorny truths, and the wicked girls at the heart of both.

Little Thieves has been sat on my TBR since is first released last year. I am such a huge fan of retellings and this one just sounded absolutely amazing. I couldn’t wait to dive into it and read it… however, unfortunately this one did not live up to my expectations and I ended up being really disappointed.

I’ve seen such amazing reviews for this book, and honestly, I’m not entirely sure what I am missing… but I’m definitely missing something. Maybe it’s because I don’t remember a lot of the original fairytale The Goose Girl, but I just really struggled to get into this one. Don’t get me wrong nothing about this book is bad. I liked the writing style, and the setting. I just really struggled with the motivation to pick this one up. When I did pick it up, I thought it was okay. But once I put it down for a break, I didn’t pick up the book for days and days on end. After trying to read this one for almost a month, and only managing to get to page 130, I decided it was finally time to cut my losses and give up on this one.

I really wish I had liked this one, but I struggled to connect with any of the characters. I really just didn’t like any of them, and it’s hard to care about a book when you don’t like or care about what’s going to happen to the characters. Unfortunately this one just wasn’t for me.

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