Hi friends! It’s been a minute since I’ve posted here. I’ve been struggling with some health issues, and that means I’m not always in the mood to write blog posts. However, I recently finished Portrait of a Thief, so here is my review!
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Quick Synopsis
History is told by the conquerors. Across the Western world, museums display the spoils of war, conquest, colonialism: priceless pieces of art looted from other countries, kept even now. Will Chen plans to steal them back.
About Portrait of a Thief
Title: Portrait of a Thief
Author: Grace D. Li
Rating: 3 Stars
CAWPILE: 5.5/10
Genre: Fiction
Content Warnings: Death (mentioned), grief, violence
Tropes: Found family
Format: eARC
Publisher: Tiny Reparations Publisher
Date Published: April 5th 2022
Goodreads Description: A senior at Harvard, Will fits comfortably in his carefully curated roles: a perfect student, an art history major and sometimes artist, the eldest son who has always been his parents’ American Dream. But when a mysterious Chinese benefactor reaches out with an impossible—and illegal—job offer, Will finds himself something else as well: the leader of a heist to steal back five priceless Chinese sculptures, looted from Beijing centuries ago.
His crew is every heist archetype one can imagine—or at least, the closest he can get. A con artist: Irene Chen, a public policy major at Duke who can talk her way out of anything. A thief: Daniel Liang, a premed student with steady hands just as capable of lockpicking as suturing. A getaway driver: Lily Wu, an engineering major who races cars in her free time. A hacker: Alex Huang, an MIT dropout turned Silicon Valley software engineer. Each member of his crew has their own complicated relationship with China and the identity they’ve cultivated as Chinese Americans, but when Will asks, none of them can turn him down.
Because if they succeed? They earn fifty million dollars—and a chance to make history. But if they fail, it will mean not just the loss of everything they’ve dreamed for themselves but yet another thwarted attempt to take back what colonialism has stolen.
I received a review copy from Edelweiss. All opinions are my own.
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Portrait of a Thief Review
Characters – 8/10
As some of you may know, Portrait of a Thief is one of my most anticipated books for 2022. Sadly, I am disappointed. Not so much in the characters, but definitely in the plot and conflicts. Let’s introduce our heist crew.
Will – our resident heist mastermind, artist, and the charismatic “glue” of the group.
Irene – gets everything she wants, Will’s sister, the actual mastermind/planner.
Daniel – his dad’s an FBI agent and art heist expert.
Lily – drives fast cars, is pretty.
Alex – repeatedly tells us she’s not a hacker, then proceeds to hack into the FBI.
My main issue with the characters is that they are all just thrown together and I don’t buy that Will is a charismatic enough character to keep this found family together. They are all at different universities, and besides Will, Irene and Daniel, they don’t know each other. What stands out the most about them is their experiences with being Chinese American.
I think all of their individual experiences surrounding the Asian diaspora and being children of immigrants are captured really well. I definitely do not know anything about being Asian American (since I am South African), but I could emphasize with the characters (as someone who also doesn’t belong in Africa but also doesn’t belong in Europe).
Unfortunately, I did not believe any of the romances that sprung from this crew. They all felt forced and rather fast. I did enjoy the friendships between these characters though. The strength of this book definitely lies in the characters, which I enjoyed.
Atmosphere – 6/10
I thought the worldbuilding was fine. I haven’t been to any of the locations mentioned in this book, but Li does a great job of describing the museums and the locations. It gave me a bit of travel FOMO though.
Writing – 5/10
I don’t want to be too negative here, but the writing was SO repetitive. It was great in the first 30%, but it never evolved past that. Li kept using the same descriptor words (variations of Golden) and eventually kept repeating the same conversations over and over again. It got boring real fast, and made the book drag.
Plot – 4/10
I want to give the plot some more credit, but I cannot. While this may be a character-driven book, there’s still a heist happening. And that’s what I couldn’t wrap my head around. Here’s the thing, I am all in for the concept. However, the execution leaves something to be desired. I cannot wrap my head around how they are pulling this heist off. They’re using Zoom and Google docs to plan 6 international art heists. ZOOM AND GOOGLE DOCs. They are leaving such a paper trail it’s making me uncomfortable.
There should be some suspension of belief in novels like this, but this was going too far. I will add that the Zoom and Google Docs thing was changed in the final version to encrypted chatrooms.
Intrigue – 6/10
The main conflict in this story was the characters exploring and unpacking their diaspora, but the other conflicts are also worth mentioning. Daniel navigating and fixing his estranged relationship with his father was one of my favourite parts of this book. I also really enjoyed the ending of this book.
Logic – 5/10
As I said, this is a great exploration of the Chinese American diaspora. It is not a great heist novel, unfortunately. However, don’t just take my word for it. Here’s a review from Bookish Brews you should definitely check out.
Enjoyment – 5/10
Overall this isn’t a bad book, and I would definitely read more from Li in the future.
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Your honesty is commendable!
I was in it for the heists and the rep. I was also disappointed with the general plot and the use of Google docs and such. I think it was purposely done so which highlights again that these individuals are amateurs and have been mostly lucky. You pointed out that you didn’t think Will would have been able to keep them together, and I agree with you. It made so much sense when I read that. I didn’t even realize it until I read your review!
I have been looking forward to this, and thank you for your review. I especially like that you emphasized that it being an unfortunately bad heist novel does not take away from the great representation of Asian American diaspora. Will definitely take these critiques into consideration when I read it.
I get what you mean. One of the books I read last year had the same problem. The concept is interesting but not the execution. I still want to give this one a try tho, since the character relationships are my favorite thing!
Love the review!