I think I got this for free or .99 and it ended up being better than I expected. Fluff for sure, but sometimes that's what I want since I do a lot of reading in bed when I'm so tired I can barely follow a plot line. I will check out more in the series. ( )

The Little Bookworm
Kick Keswick is the world's best jewel thief. But she is retired. That is until the Queen's jewels are stolen and Kick is recruited to steal them back. Kick enters the world of the beyond wealthy to find the thief and get back the jewels and it will take all her wits and skill to do just that.

I love heist stories. And this one is an inverted heist story because Kick is a thief stealing from a thief at the behest of Scotland Yard. Kick is very good at what she does and she knows a lot about jewels and jewelry and all the finest things in life. I liked her and her descriptions of all these things. And food. OMG the food in this book is described in such detail. I went around hungry the entire time I read it.

It turns out, though, that this is third in the series. It wasn't a problem, prior knowledge isn't really necessary to read this one. There is some summing up of past adventures but it's not blow-by-blow or anything. But now I want to start at the beginning and read some of her adventures when she was an actual jewel thief and not just "coming out of retirement" for this caper. Because Kick is very clever and really knows her stuff. The plan is so simple yet so elaborate and I loved reading how it played out. This is definitely a fun series if you like mysteries or heists or food or all of the above. ( )

Most disappointing. I wanted to like it, I really did, but it requires too much suspension of disbelief.

Unlike the first book, the second and now this third one are not about the heroïne herself per se, but her adventures in honorable jewel theft. One learns little about her character (which was much of what made me adore the first book). Instead it's just a narrative of the planning and execution of a heist in a secret Eurotrash mountain lair: luxury shopping, manipulating people, and using super-gadgets. (And she's the *good guy.*) Also, mystery? Not really. The only mysteries are who's doing the dishonorable stealing, and what is the heroïne's plan for foiling them. The reader is provided with no clues: all of a sudden the heroïne has a flash of insight and realizes who the thief is, and by the time she starts her own plan there are so few pages left that you know it can't go too badly wrong.

The (super)heroïne is rather like Ayla of Jean Auel's "Earth's Children" series in that her resources and accomplishments seem to grow exponentially between books: whereas in the first book she had the resources to 'live in comfort for a couple of hundred years,' now she's up to 'ultimate luxury for several hundred years.' Without batting an eye she drops what seems to be at least a couple million dollars on clothes, gizmos, and fake gems, almost all of which she seems to abandon in the course of her caper. (Maybe it was the housing bubble and in the fifth book she'll be down to 'contentment for a couple of decades' or something.) Her farmhouse in France seems to sprout new safes and secret passages with every growing season. It's just not credible, and it's eroded my trust in the author.

The editing is poor, and there are several instances of boilerplating from the first book. ( )