"All parents leave their own scars. We're the ones who have to heal from them." — Portrait of a Thief, Grace D. Li.

Fast & Furious meets Ocean Eleven and Drive in Grace D. Li's debut novel, Portrait of a Thief!

I can't believe I finished this book! It's been so long since I wanted to read it, I still remember the day I discovered it through Grace's Instagram when she revealed the cover! But I am so happy Netgalley and Hodder&Soughton allowed me to review it, and I thank them a lot for that!

Portrait of a Thief traces the story of Will Chen who, after being caught in the middle of a heist in the Sackler and one of the thieves gives him a card, is thrust on the road to Beijing, China. His mission is simple: he needs a crew to illegally retrieve the five priceless sculptures that have been stolen from China. With him, there is his sister, Irene Chen, whose beauty gives her everything she wants; Alex Huang, who's not really a hacker nor an engineer; Lily Wu, an experimented race driver; and Daniel Wang, his childhood best friend who's about to enter med school and who's got a particular talent for stealing. Torn between what is right and the questioning of their identity as children of immigrants, the five of them embark on a perilous journey to prove their love for a country they have seldom/never visited and who they really are.

I knew more or less what I was diving into when I started this book and it was without surprise that the story hooked me from the beginning. Every character has their own personality, weaknesses and strengths, and I love how their relationships evolved throughout the story. Love was exposed with all its meanings in this book: love between a sister and a brother; love between a father and his son; love between two students who are lost in their lives; and obviously, love for a nation. I particularly loved this latter point since it is not often that I read it in YA novels. We get to have a glimpse of how each of them came to love a country their roots are not so deep within it. Will and Irene especially epitomise this point: the traditions and values their parents pass them as a heritage made them fall in love with and respect a nation with which they have a particular connection. Lily and Alex connect with it also through their parents and the wounds they brought back with them after immigrating. As for Dan Li, his memory of China is so vivid in his mind as they are closely related to his late mother that he is torn between holding on to those and accepting he is now a child of another nation: the United States.

Portrait of a Thief is thus a story about immigration and how to find an identity when children of immigrants are torn between two nations: China and the US. I believe Grace D. Li really mastered this topic. I also liked the fact that the spectrum of experiences was so large that it didn't reduce the experience of immigration to one narrative. The five protagonists are depicted really conflicted and lost, but the dynamics that happen between them and the heist they organise together clear all these obscured parts in their minds to eventually unravel the responses to their identity crisis.

All this made me change my mind about a few thoughts that I had at the beginning of the novel. Portrait of a Thief is known and pitched as a heist novel, which is not wrong but not completely the right idea behind the novel in my opinion. I could envisage that a few people will be disappointed by it because, in all honesty, many points in the stealing of the traditional pieces would not work in real life. Do I think that's actually the point of the story? Not really. The novel somewhat made me think of Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone in that it was putting a heist/stealing at the forefront of the story without making it be the core of the subject but a pretext to highlight more important themes related to imperialism. Imperialism was the second more important aspect of the story after the identity crisis of the characters.

Do we watch the Fast & Furious or Ocean Eleven movies because they outline realist thefts? I'm not sure. Grace D. Li even keeps mentioning this throughout the story. All of her characters explicitly state that this heist would only end badly because they knew all from the beginning (except Alex maybe) that it wouldn't work. Again, it is said that they aren't professional. And if I was to put myself in their shoes, surely there would be many things I wouldn't have done the same, but I'm sure I would have not known from where to start and what to do. I suspect, however, that some information were omitted in the first drafts of the novel and that Grace D. Li had to add them for the story to make more sense. At least, that's what I felt at some point in my reading.

Generally though, despite the lack of realism concerning the heist, I really enjoyed and loved this story. It is not perfect, but it strikes you deep in the heart. I could somehow relate to all characters and ended up really missing them even before finishing the novel. For all the emotions I felt while reading, I want to encourage Grace by giving this book five stars. She made me fall in love again with some aspects of China and the East-Asian world and cultures (and by culture, of course I am referring to the midnight karaoke sessions between friends). I would encourage everyone to read this book!

Again, thank you so much Netgalley and Hodder&Soughton for the opportunity to review this title! That was a pleasure!

When working at a museum, Will witnesses an art theft and is left a card, to have a chance at getting historical objects back their countries. But first he needs a crew and a plan...

First of all let me say, I love the conversation of stolen objects being sent back to there rightful owners/countries. I think the author did an amazing job asking what right do we have to other cultures belongings and is it stealing if it's already stolen?

I also thought the author did a really good job of showing the characters being the bridge to these opposing countries.

But unfortunately, I never really connected to the characters or there struggles beyond a surface level. And due to the fact that this is a multi perspective novel, it's very difficult for each character to stand out in any note worthy way. I also think it would have been better if the characters where a little older maybe late 20s because I think they would have come off as more world weary, which would have shown them being more disenchanted by the West

Sharp, slick, and seriously addictive. This is a smart, heart-felt homage to cultural heritage and found family whilst being an easy, pacy read that will keep readers flying through the pages.

I never thought a heist book would be my cup of tea and I've never felt the need to test this hypothesis either.
That is until I read the premise for "Portrait of a Thief'.

This book follows Will, Irene, Alex, Lily and Daniel as they battle with their sense of identity and belonging, their dreams and the dreams of their parents and family, the weight of legacy and the loss of culture and all the other things that being a member of diaspora brings...all while planning to rob the most prestigious museums in the world.

They are as Irene calls them ' International Art Thieves with midterms next week'.

Grace Li is a skilled author (can't believe this is her debut novel and that she is also a medical student?! a bit of a legend me thinks) she builds and develops these characters so well and the depth of insight she brought into the interpersonal relations of a Beijing 5 is more than commendable. This weaving of emotional character building with an action-packed plot was amazing (some of my fave full-throttle moments were to be found in Paris *there is a pun here but it's a spoiler to explain lol).

The underlying message and themes resonated deeply with me as a member of the diaspora (albeit the Nigerian diaspora, not Chinese, though if anyone knows about the Benin statues they would know how deep the resonance might have been), and I felt so much connection with the characters because of it. The diaspora and second-generation immigrant experience are so complex but Li captures so many crucial elements of it so beautifully in this book. That being said this book can resonate with anyone that has ever felt pressure from family expectations, felt a disconnect or feelings of loss or even just ever pondered on what identity really means in relation to themselves.

This book was so entertaining to read and it works so well as a book, but it's also got an innate cinematic aura to it and I am unsurprised that it's already been picked up for a serial by Netflix and I for one cannot wait!!

Big thanks to the publisher for giving me an eArc for review from Netgalley.

When I first heard about Portrait of a Thief I was immediately taken in by the concept of a group of Chinese-American students stealing Chinese art back from western museums. And this book delivered on that, alongside explorations of colonialism through art and Chinese-American identity. On paper, it’s a great book.

I felt that this book’s strength lay in the themes it explored. I really enjoyed the exploration of Chinese-American identity, especially as it was through the lens of five different characters who all saw their identity in a slightly different light. In a similar vein, I really liked the conversations surrounding colonialism, ownership and power in art. The story was a great vehicle to explore this and I appreciated how the story was resolved in relation to this theme. I also enjoyed the writing style, it had a beautiful simplicity to it. The slight changes between the ways different POV characters described the world around them was a nice touch: Will, the artist, saw the world in sweeping brush strokes and Daniel, the aspiring doctor, often referred to the intricacies of the human body.

However, I just wasn’t hooked. This book took me a long time to read. When I was reading it it held my attention but I just didn’t find myself wanting to pick it up and so it dragged on. Furthermore, as lovely as I found the writing, it began to get repetitive. It felt like the characters were having the same conversations over and over with nothing new coming from them. Certain sentiments were repeated several times (especially in internal monologues) and I felt that this was unnecessary.

I also struggled with the characters. They didn’t feel fully fleshed out and three dimensional to me. Perhaps because there were so many in not a long book that they didn’t get enough page time. Similarly, the relationships lacked development. I also found the heist plotline a bit flimsy. It required a lot of suspension of disbelief that these young adults with no experience could watch a couple heist movies and suddenly rob high security museums. This was addressed in the book and I think is intentional to some extent but I still found the resolution a bit weak.

Portrait of a Thief had an amazing concept but, in my opinion, didn’t manage to stick the landing. I feel that this book tried to do too much: it had so many characters, so many important conversations, two relationships and also the heists and everything that came with them. While it excelled in its themes, other essential parts of the book fell to the wayside, resulting in an underdeveloped story and characters. I wish I had loved this as the concept was right up my street, especially with two sapphic main characters, but unfortunately it just wasn’t for me.

Thank you to Netgalley and Hodder & Stoughton for this early copy in exchange for an honest review.

Portrait of a Thief tells the story of 5 Chinese American college students that are commissioned to steal back Chinese art in exchange for $50 million.

The story is intriguing and detailed, referencing well known heist films and books. The pace is steady and perfect for the type of story it's telling. It gripped me from the opening page and left that element of excitement and intrigue open through out.

The characters are all fighting some feeling of not being enough, which makes the relatable and loveable to myself. They are all different but facing diaspora in their own way.

The synopsis of this really had me excited and it did not disappoint, with a fantastically thought out twist, leaving you with a feeling of satisfaction as it all comes to an end.

5 stars!

I finished this book about 5 minutes ago and for some reason I think that writing this review while I’m all up in my feels and wiping my tears is the best way to go about it.

I knew I was going to love this book, I knew this book would be good. I just had no idea how much it would hit me, how much of it would feel as if someone had ripped open my head, taken thoughts from my brain, and put them onto paper.

This is a story about a group friends and a group of heists. This is a story about a Chinese-American group of friends trying to reclaim art that had been stolen from China long ago.

But this story is so much more.

It’s about loss and heartbreak and the inherent anxiety that comes with being in your early to mid twenties and having absolutely no idea if the future thats always been carved out for you is what you should be following.

It’s about feeling like you don’t belong anywhere, even when you’re technically meant to belong in multiple places. And yet, nowhere ever feels quite like a home.

It’s about feeling like you’re not good enough. Not good enough to help your family. Not good enough to be an artist. Not good enough to claim the life you’ve always wanted for yourself.

I feel like this is a story everyone should read. But be sure to keep a pack of tissues nearby, in case you’re the emotional type like me.

Exciting, engrossing, page turner. Keeps you involved even if you know it's fiction. This book was definitely a winner for me, thoroughly enjoyed it and would recommend to all. Thank you to Netgalley, the author and publisher for providing me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review. Top marks! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Portrait of a Thief had me ensared from the first pages. The writing style and themes were right up my alley and I read the entire thing in one sitting. I did much prefer the first half of the novel than the second but it was still overall a fantastic novel that I really enjoyed.

Like I said, I really enjoyed the writing style. However there was a slight issue of repeating a couple of phrases at the beginning of chapters which got a little repetitive and cringy after a while, but it was a very minor issue for me honestly and the main bulk of the writing was great.

The plot was interesting and intriguing and whilst there were less pages dedicated to the actual heists than I expected, I didn't overly mind as it was primarily character based. This was very much a coming of age story about five chinese-american college students who are coming to terms with their identity and place in the world. Whilst there was heists and excitement, it was more of a secondary plot. The characters were a wide-spread of personalities and morals and I loved four of them. Unfortunately, Irene rubbed me the wrong way right from the beginning and I just could not warm up to her at all, which sucks because objectively she's very interesting, I just couldn't connect at all. The other four were fascinating however and I was rooting for them all the way.

Overall I really liked this, it wasn't at all what I expected but I enjoyed it all the same.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for a copy of this in exchange for an honest review.

I wish I could have loved this book more than I did, because I think the kind of story the book wants to tell - a tale of art history, of Chinese-American diaspora, of colonialism in the museum industry - is intriguing and important. Unfortunately, it just didn't work for me, for a couple of reasons.

The first reason is more of a marketing irk, and that's the fact that a lot of the advertising for this book focuses on the heist aspect. It's true that the heists are the driving force of the novel, but don't be fooled: this isn't a fast-paced, intense, exciting book. The heists take up maybe ten pages, max. This is a coming-of-age story following five Chinese-American young adults grappling with their identity, and that's totally fine, of course, but when you're told that it's going to be filled with heist action it's disappointing that the heists are clean-cut and over with before you've realised they've begun.

The second, and main, reason this didn't work for me is the writing style. It was lyrical and beautiful in places, but it was <i>so</i> repetitive. The author repeats points over and over for the entirety of the novel to the point where it almost sent me into a reading slump (and is why it took me so long to read) because it was so grating. It felt like the author kept repeating the same points - that one character lived in Galveston, that one character dropped out of MIT - so you'd remember whose chapter it was and so you'd always remember their motivations. This "show don't tell" kind of writing meant that all five of the characters fell flat (minus Daniel to a point, whose internal struggle involving his father was probably the most gripping aspect of the book as it went on), which is definitely not what you want when you've set up a multi-perspective heist novel.

I would still recommend this novel, especially to young Chinese-American readers (this book is technically an adult book, but it could easily have been young adult); it's just unfortunate that a lot of it didn't work for me personally.

It's quite an achievement to write a dull heist novel, but Grace D Li has managed it. I was so looking forwarding to reading this, her debut novel. There are certain ingredients that a reader expects as a minimum in a heist novel - excitement, a clever and intricate plot, and ideally a bit of fun/humour as well. You imagine something escapist and enjoyable. 'Portrait of a Thief' does not have those elements. It is instead a rather tedious and drawn out coming-of-age novel about five young Chinese-Americans, grappling with their identities, growing up, families and relationships. There are many many books about those things, and many of them are better than this.

The concept is a good one. For any heist story to work there needs to be something that makes the reader sympathise with the thieves so they don't have to feel guilty for rooting for criminals. In this case, our robbers are taking back Chinese art looted by the British during the Opium wars. Requests from China to return the art had not been honoured, and so a rich Chinese benefactor commissions the students - none of them with any previous art theft experience - to steal back five artefacts located in museums across Europe and the US.

The trouble is that the thefts themselves take up very little page time at all. Instead we get pages and pages of ploddingly written angsting about the characters' deep emotions, their feelings of inadequacy, their failed romances and petty quarrels. The heists have to be the most boring I've ever read - I didn't feel remotely anxious or excited at any point. The characters aren't even very likeable, which adds to the lack of emotional response from me as a reader to the theft scenes.

The novel slightly redeems itself at the very end (the reason it gets two and not one star) with a slightly cleverer resolution than I'd have given it credit for based on the pedestrian nature of the rest. But it misses a trick in never really exploring in depth the nuances of 'ownership' of art, cultural appropriation, and whether art should be returned to its country/region of origin - and if there are any circumstances where it should not. For example, should art be kept safely abroad to protect it from destruction in war? And is stealing art just to give it to a wealthy individual (albeit a Chinese one), where it cannot be displayed, the right way to return cultural treasures to a nation? It surprised me that the latter point was never raised - and maybe that's because the characters did feel that something being hidden in China was better than it being shared in a European or American museum. But it would have been interesting to explore that. But none of these things were ever looked at. It was simply 'art in Europe = bad, art hidden in penthouse in Beijing = good'. Personally I do think that art should be 'owned' by and displayed in its rightful place e.g. the Elgin Marbles should be in Greece. But there was no real attempt to challenge or expand on that in this, a novel ostensibly based on that very argument.

If you enjoy heist novels, don't bother with this one - it's not really a heist novel and it won't have the elements you enjoy in a heist. If you like books about young people worrying about their place in the world, and doing so endlessly, you might enjoy it - although there are many novels out there that do it better.

I find this so very hard to review.

Did I love it? Did I find it okay but want to love it so now I feel like I do love it?
Did it take me 2 weeks to read? Do I want to reread it now?

YES!

Is it an adult novel? ehh...debatable. It doesn't quite feel YA, we have protagonists in their early 20s, but it had the FEEL of a middle grade novel to me. I don't know why...it just did.

So this book needs to count on your ability to suspend your disbelief. 20/21 year old amateurs being hired to steal priceless art from world famous museums for $50 million? ehh okay so honestly to billionaires that amount isn't a lot and maybe someone would do it for their own fun to screw with the poor folk...but that never seems to be the case...and it could have EASILY been made into the case...but nah, these college aged folk are genuinely hired to do this, despite the ability for more experienced and connected people to do the job (more chance of success and less risk of consequence). WHATEVER, I'm here for some fun heists....which we kind of get.

The book also references COVID....in such a badly done way, sure the author didn't know what the state of the world would be in mid-late 2022 when the story takes place...but talking about the pandemic as it was years ago and has been over years is.....misguided. The COVID parts did nothing to add to the story, the BLM mentions added nothing to the story. Referencing the fact that this book takes place in this year just took me more out of it than the silly heist.

To be honest the sapphic rivals-to-lovers storyline is what had me in a vice. It gave me Paris/Rory in high school vibes when all you want to do is just make them KISS already.

So yes, I loved this book....but I recommend it with a caution of reality and how much heist one actually gets.

I went into this book fired up and ready to love it -- it has an incredible premise, offering so many things I love in one package: heists! critical examination of colonialism! diaspora experience! Chinese art and culture! -- and yet this was not that book, or the book I thought it would be, at the very least.

I think there were several factors at play that had a compounded effect, bringing the worst in each other.

* I am a die-hard fan of stylish heists, but the book seems to have engaged with the genre staples only superficially, for aesthetics, at the same time being dead-serious about the premise of a glamorous and mysterious Chinese corporation hiring a bunch of amateur college students to recover its national treasure. The same string of implausible things could have been enjoyable if it was served in a rompy, tongue-in-cheek manner, with some acknowledgement of its absurdity — we don’t want heist narratives for realism; we want it for a display of stylish competence — that would allow us to suspend disbelief, but there was no trace of humour or self-aware irony in any of it, nor is there much competence. Framing it as a serious narrative sucked all the joy out of it.

* I see the word lyrical used in reviews to describe the tone of the book, but it crossed the line from lyrical to melodramatic very soon. What the book was really into doing was expressing thoughts on the duality of diaspora experience, the yearnings and cravings of early twenty-somethings on the cusp of graduating and having to make something of their promise and potential. Instead of complementing the action, it was at odds with the beats of the heist novel. We didn’t get much suspense or dazzling display of sleights of hand, but we sure get inner and outer monologues about intense feelings about debt to a strangely glossy and mythologized version of China, cityscapes and sunsets and the play of light on everyone’s attractive faces. And the descriptions themselves, while eye-catching at first, get really repetitive really fast — both on a sentence and a structure level.

* Inner monologues in general don’t do much to address the general “show don’t tell” problem, but they sure make it worse here. Even ignoring the question of why these kids were doing it in the first place (as one of the reviewers pointed out, none of them actually had the kind of life that would incite them to throw all to the wind and jump on the shady offer to rob high-security museums), it’s the how that puts me off the story. They are both hilariously unqualified for the job and have informed competences don’t really shine on page. If you find it ridiculous that a pre-med student opens a high security lock with a hair pin in under ten minutes with no preparation, just you wait until they start planning crime in google doc and whatsapp.

* Informed awesomeness by way of melodramatic description makes for a very one-dimensional cast. They are very earnestly recruited for their archetypes, dutifully mirroring Ocean’s Eleven and others of the genre, but characters here neither fully inhabit the archetype (back to the question of why /them/), and they don’t feel fully-fleshed to transcend them either. When they feel like three quirks in a trenchcoat (eyeliner and a conwoman smile! car keys and California tan! etc etc), it’s pretty hard to care about what they do or what happens to them. If they are so golden, smart and beautiful, how come what they are doing is so dull and silly?

* I do wonder if this should not have been marketed towards younger audiences…

Anyway. I’m disappointed this novel could not be the book I can rave about to my friends, but at the same time if this paves way for more books of this kind, with own voices and chewy thoughts to pepper a fun narrative with, it will have done well. I’ll keep on trying them, and hopefully find something that I can love without reservations.


Thanks to #NetGalley for an advance copy of #PortraitofaThief

In Portait of a Thief we follow a group of 20 year olds on a mission to return stolen artifacts to their homeland, with a reward of fifty million dollars, the heist is funded by a Chinese billionaire. The leader of the group Will Chen, assembles a team of his Chinese American friends, Daniel, Alex, Lily and his sister Irene in an attempt to break into museums across Sweden, France, England, Norway and the USA to and return them to their country of origin. The author does a wonderful job at setting scenes, Bejing is descibed beautifully, as are Paris and Stockholm, and I particularly loved Lily's racing scenes. This was a fun and interesting read, and I think it does a great job of bringing the history of stolen art and the complicated way in which museums acquire pieces to light. This was a fast paced story and despite there being a few times I really had to suspend my belief, I enjoyed it a lot.

Thank you to Netgalley and Hodder & Stoughton for the chance to read Portrait of a Thief.

Ok NO. I came for a heist. That's all. I bloody love a heist, I do. The best episodes of The Blacklist are the ones where Red gets the band back together and pulls off an OUTRAGEOUS heist. The best book in the Grishaverse is unquestionably Six of Crows, the one where Kaz pulls off an audacious heist at the ice court. Oceans Eight? 6 out of 5 stars, give me more please. So, I was here for the heists, and the 'sticking it to colonialism' part just added an extra chefs kiss to the whole affair.

The thing the heists above have in common is a twisted genius at the centre, pulling all of the strings, operating several steps ahead of everyone and with contingency plans up the wazoo. What they DON'T have is a group of inexperienced teenagers cherry picked by a shadowy billion dollar Chinese corporation for unknown reasons. A group so inexperienced they, I kid you not, WATCH OCEANS ELEVEN FOR RESEARCH DURING A ZOOM PLANNING MEETING!?!? I just can't.

With hindsight, I focussed on the word 'heist' in the description and what I SHOULD have focussed on is 'lush, lyrical' - that's right folks, it's a LITERARY heist. We all know what that means - why use 10 words when 50 will do; and well executed plot, what well executed plot? Once again I feel like I have to blame the person who wrote the blurb more than the author though. The description made me expect something different so we'll never know if I would have liked it on its own merits because the disconnect is too great. Publishers, I urge you, BLURB YOUR BOOKS ACCURATELY!

I kinda have a lot to say about this one. This book was probably one of my most anticipated reads for 2022. I'm pretty passionate about the repatriation of art and cultural artefacts and the need to disrupt the current museum status-quo so this seemed right up my alley.

Before I start this review proper, I want to say that I am not from the Chinese or Chinese American community so I can only comment on certain aspects of the novel and will not be touching on the wider commentary in the novel with regards to white privilege, family expectations in certain cultural groups, BLM and other issues that may specifically impact minority communities. I think it is important to give the floor to own voices people on those topics and as a white westerner, I have nothing of value to add to that particular discussion.

In this novel, five young adults are tasked by an enigmatic Chinese billionaire with stealing back five Chinese Bronzes from museums around the world. The bronzes did exist in real life but those featured in this novel as targets for the gang to steal are currently lost. Will, a Harvard Fine Art student, acts as the leader and the rest of the group are made up of his family and friends. Let me say first off that this is a HORRIBLE way to put together a team to rob some of the world’s most security-conscious museums. Their lack of experience is briefly touched upon and then basically never mentioned again. They are all reasonably talented as university students go, but apart from Lily none of them has a standout skill that would make them essential for a job like this. Surely a mysterious billionaire would demand the very best? Especially considering that it is clear from the very beginning of the novel that there is another team on the go who can achieve results.

This leads me onto some of the other niggles. For a heist story to be successful, the heists actually have to be good and the heists in this book just…aren’t. If you compare them to something like those featured in Six of Crows or The Queens Thief series, you can see where these heists are lacking. The build-up to them is just glossed over, they do research, they work on some Google docs, they watch Oceans 11 and then decide not to do anything remotely clever? It’s not helped by plot holes like the group getting through airport security not once but TWICE with the bronzes in their suitcases. I mean come on, there is no way customs and airport security wouldn’t be on high alert. Maybe they figured no one would be so stupid as to actually try that. Little things too like buying a second-hand car in France. A quick Google search showed me that as with many things in France, buying a used car is actually a bureaucratic nightmare that involves showing proof of residency and insurance. Maybe I’m being pedantic but little things like this ruin my immersion. There are too many plot holes and I kept waiting for the clever ways out of their predicaments to appear like Lupin or Six of Crows but nope. A heist book should have clever heists.

The characters themselves had potential but I struggled to engage with them. I just didn’t feel like there was a sense of urgency or desperation and didn’t really buy their motivations as to why they’d take such a risk. The stakes didn’t feel very high for one thing. They were all top students at Ivy League universities or working in lucrative Silicon Valley tech jobs yet as a reader we are supposed to be worried about their future prospects? I think I’d definitely have engaged with the characters more if I felt they had a burning need and desire to do retrieve the Bronzes other than ‘tens of millions of dollars will be better than the millions I’m likely to make in my swish job at Google’. The characters just started irritating me after a while. The constant repetition of their yearnings and desires and the start of every character point of view chapter felt like constantly circling back to an introduction of who the characters are. They seemed forever stuck in the past with the constant repetition of their goals and desires and the time they spent talking to each other about how damn scared they were all the time and quite frankly I just didn’t bloody care anymore after hearing it for the millionth time. Ditto for hearing over and over again about the chuffing sunlight in the Beijing penthouse.

I also think the book missed a trick in not offering up a deeper exploration of the art itself and the politics and ethics behind it. The group was tasked with stealing art back ‘for China’ but realistically, could this stolen art be displayed? And if not, is it more ethical to steal it back into the hands of a billionaire private collector? The looting of the Summer Palace and its framing as a tragedy was mentioned numerous times but if something like this is compared to the stripping of cultural items from Versailles during the French Revolution and the Winter Palace in the Russian Revolution are we losing sight of the fact at the end of the day, this was art produced for elites that wasn’t ‘for the people’ in either China or the West.

I’m a bit sad because I was SO excited for this book and it had so much potential but it just didn’t live up to it for me.

Exploring grief, belonging, and the ways the past and present interlink in poetically gorgeous prose - this is a truly stunning novel.

Portrait of a Thief is a heist story wrapped up in the tale of five Chinese-American students carving their own futures, as they race to try and reclaim sculptures for China. Will Chen is an art history student at Harvard who wants to make a difference. When a powerful Chinese company offers him fifty million dollars to put together a heist crew and steal five sculptures from various galleries, he would do it without the money, just to bring the art back to its creators. He puts together a team, of his sister Irene, who can talk anyone into anything, his best friend Daniel who is applying to med schools, Irene's roommate and street racer Lily, and Alex, an MIT dropout working for Google though she's feeling lost. Together, despite lacking any experience of stealing art, they try to work out how they can get in and, most importantly, get the art back out.

I love heist films and I love stories of university students doing illegal/questionable things, so this book immediately appealed to me. I like how it feels like a literary twist on the heist, more focused on the characters and their often haphazard attempts to pull heists off than being a simple slick display, and I was drawn into the characters' interpersonal relationships, particularly Irene and Alex's dynamic. For a heist story, you saw a lot of the characters' thoughts and motivations, and though as there's five main characters these can sometimes feel a little overemphasised, that still felt fitting with how heist films need obvious dynamics and roles.

The focus on reclaiming art felt like a great frame for the book (though I did expect some comment on the repeated appearance of the Sackler, as another important issue in the art world) and though this kind of book isn't necessarily going to go into great depth about issues in museum and gallery collections, it brings together both interesting social and political questions and reflections on the characters' own senses of self and morality. Importantly, it's also just fun, with a inexpert crew of young twentysomethings doing relatable things like using a Google Doc to plan it. Sure, it's ridiculous, but so are most heist films.

Portrait of a Thief is the trashy literary heist book I didn't know I needed, maybe particularly aimed at people who love both the Ocean's films and The Secret History, but also with a look at cultural imperalism and diaspora. It's not perfect, but I was holding my breath to know what would happen, and I loved the character dynamics. I would not be sad if there was a sequel, either.

A brilliant voice and an intensely satisfying plot made this impossible to put down. Crossing everything in the hope a movie adaptation is on the cards.

2.5/5 stars

This was one of my most anticipated releases of 2022 and it was on my 5 star predictions list. Now it's ending up on my most disappointing list. I'm very upset about it. The book had so much potential but unfortunately it did not live up to what I was expecting from it.

The good

- This book has some fantastic discussions about art ownership and art history. I loved the passages where the characters would ruminate about returning art to its rightful place. It was very impactful.

- The characters were phenomenal. They each had their own interesting relationship with their heritage and culture and I loved seeing those facets explored. They all felt fleshed out and had some intriguing backstories. By the end of the book, I was just reading for the characters.

- The sapphic relationship had me IN A CHOKEHOLD. I would die for Alex and Irene thank you very much.

The meh

- The writing was good in the beginning. I was highlighting some of the most beautiful sentences and descriptions. As I read further, the descriptions kept being repeated. The prose ended up being so repetitive that I kept skimming because I knew what would be said before reading it because I'd seen it in the previous chapter already. Describing things in 'gold light' or 'blue light' appeared in every single chapter and by the end of the book, the descriptions all felt the same.

The ugly

- The heist plot was so flimsy. I laughed out loud when the characters mentioned that they watched Oceans 11 for inspiration and that they planned the heist over Zoom and a Google Doc. The elements of the heist plot really ask you to suspend your belief because they do not hold up in real life. I found this to be the most disappointing element of the entire book.

- I found the premise of the book to be very flimsy as well. No one would stake 50 Million Dollars on 5 amateur college students who have to pull off 5 heists across the world in 5 top security museums.

- Let's not even talk about the ending. The reader was too stunned to speak. The disappointment was on a whole other level.


Overall, I can see what the author tried to accomplish but the most important parts of the story were overshadowed by a flimsy plot and repetitive prose.