Book Review :: Little Thieves by Margaret Owen

Little Thieves by Margaret Owen
ISBN: 1250191904
Series: Little Thieves #1
Published by Henry Holt & Company
on 2021-10-19
Genres: Fantasy, Retelling, Young Adult
Pages: 512
Source: Hachette Publishing NZ
Find at Hachette NZ
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.

Last updated on 13 February 2023

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Little Thieves by Margaret Owen is a YA retelling of The Goose Girl.

And I wasn’t expecting it to be this good, I’m not going to lie. I read a retelling of The Goose Girl (a story by the Brothers Grimm, written back in 1815), Thorn, by Intisar Khanani, and I didn’t love it. I thought it was maybe The Goose Girl story that I didn’t really enjoy, so was a little apprehensive reading Little Thieves by Margaret Owen. But I was already hearing great things and that cover definitely sucked me in.

Happy to announce that I was pleasantly surprised!

Little Thieves follows the story of Vanja Schmidt, a girl with Death and Fortune as godmothers, a girl with a rough past and a pretty grim future (though she’s done a pretty good job at forging her own path). Vanja, once a loyal maid to Princess Gisele, abandons the princess and steals her life as her own. Now, a few years on, Vanja is using her newfound royal connections to steal from the rich and noble families in the country.

“In the world I knew, there were three reasons a person could be wanted: for profit, pleasure, or power. If you could satisfy only one, they used you. Two, they saw you. Three, they served you.”

But things really start to unravel when, after a robbery, Vanja is cursed by a Low God.

She has two weeks to break the curse and ‘make amends’ for all her miscoming, or she will turn into the greed she has gathered around her. As rubies and jewels start sprouting on her skin, Vanja is forced into a new mission: trying to break the curse.

It could be done quite easily: Death and Fortune will trade their help if she serves one of them for the rest of her life. But Vanja, having been a subject most of her life, wants none of it.

She’ll break the curse herself, or die trying.

My thoughts on Little Thieves

While I enjoyed Little Thieves more than Thorn, the other Goose Girl retelling I’ve read, I found myself hooked at parts, and wanting more at others. The first hundred pages or so I was so engrossed in the story. I thought ‘this is going to be a 5-star read, for sure’, but then I found it lagging in the middle a bit, only picking up in the end.

However! This was a really creative and imaginative retelling and Owen did a superb job at taking a lesser-known story, unpacking the details and reconstructing it into something that, while still having the threads of the original story, had much more depth than the Brothers Grimm gave it.

The characters, strange and wild, were intriguing and mysterious, with a range of representations that added to the depth of the story. Vanja was an antagonist who you couldn’t quite get behind but also you wanted her outcome to be better than she’s received in her past.  The other characters in the story were fine enough, but the majority of my feelings were ‘dislike’ towards them, and only a few whom I would be upset over if they didn’t make it to the end of the book. The lack of connection and care for the characters did bump it down a star for me.

I did really enjoy the Little Thieves plot, though. It was fun and heist-filled and the magical jewels which kept appearing on Vanja’s skin were such an odd but intriguing concept (which I don’t believe is in the original story – forgive me if I’m wrong). Death and Fortune were a really great addition, especially as Vanja’s godmothers. They pop up every so often in the story.

At the beginning of every section of this book is a ‘tale’. And they all begin Once Upon A Time. They are stories of Vanja’s past, told in a fairy-tale-esque way, complete with a beautiful illustration. This was such a great touch and a bit of a homage to the original fairy tale.

This is the first book in a trilogy, which I didn’t realise until I went to add the book to Goodreads. I think I’ll read the next one in the series, Painted Devils, as I’m really intrigued as to where Owen will take it.

So all in all! A good retelling, with a fun plot and interesting characters. A little laggy at times, but overall I’ve given this book a 3.5 stars (4 on Goodreads).

Also, a big shoutout to the cover designer and illustrator. How stunning is that?!

Have you read Little Thieves? What did you think?

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This book was given to me by Hachette Publishing NZ in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my review and all thoughts and opinions are my own.