Portrait of a Thief

i'll do my best to mince my (mean) words and clarify my feelings on this book as best as possible, but honestly the more i think about it, the more it upsets me

there are a lot of concepts and archetypes that the author tried to pull in that were not well executed. i love cars and racing, but was severely let down by the clear lack of research spent towards building a car girl who loves to race. it became incredibly clear that the author used major movie franchises like fast and furious and ocean's 11 for this book but did not go the extra (necessary) mile to research the mechanics of things like street racing or oh uh i don't know actual heisting?

if you're thinking of picking up this book for the thrill of a heist, let me stop you there, because you aren't gonna find that in this book. despite great potential for heist glory, any semblance of heist execution in this book is lackluster and far too short for anyone to truly get the thrill or satisfaction of a good heist. none of the characters have any actual heist knowledge and make the stupidest mistakes that boggled my mind. i stopped taking this book seriously at like the 20% mark because of it


what i think shines particularly from this is the discussion of diaspora identity, which is tackled from five different perspectives in a pretty good way. however, as satisfied as i was with the discussion of diaspora identity struggles, it wasn't enough to outweigh my incredible disappointment towards this book.

bruh what is with this streak of me reading low vibe books? i'm UPSET...