Heist Society (Heist Society, #1)

by Ally Carter

When Katarina Bishop was three, her parents took her to the Louvre...to case it. For her seventh birthday, Katarina and her Uncle Eddie travelled to Austria...to steal the crown jewels. When Kat turned fifteen, she planned a con of her own - scamming her way into the best boarding school in the country, determined to leave the family business behind.

But now her dad's life is on the line, and Kat must go back to the world she tried so hard to escape...

• ISBN10: 1423116399
• ISBN13: 9781423116394
• Publish Date: 9 February 2010
• Publish Status: Out of Stock
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Hyperion Books for Children
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 304
• Language: English

Reviews

[ladygrey]

Cute, quick, easy read. Not a lot of depth. Kind of silly that everything hinges on a sixteen year old girl. Lightly developed characters. Hale, especially I never quite felt that I got a grasp on except he was where he needed to be when he needed to be there. And yet, effectively diverting and entertaining for a few hours. 

Another review said it’s a Disney tv movie type book and that’s exactly what it is. You sort of have to know that to suspend disbelief enough to go along with a sixteen year okd being the linchpin of everything. I mean, I read a lot of YA and still…it requires a significant suspension of disbelief. Perfect for that 12-14 crowd. Mildly amusing enough for anyone older. 

[Leah]

Ally Carter is one of the most popular writers in the divide between kids fiction and YA. Her books sort of fall into the middle there and they’re perfect for any age group. Heist Society is my first Ally Carter novel and oh gosh, I just loved it. Heist novels are my jam. Whether it’s high-stakes heists like Six of Crows or a more lighter approach like Heist Society, I love them.

Heist Society dives straight in to Katarina’s life at Colgan school, as we see her being expelled for stealing the principals car and wedging it into a fountain. It’s all a ploy, of course, as W W Hale the Fifth shows up to take her home and we find out Kat is one of the best thieves around, and comes from a whole family of thieves. (BTW, I feel bad calling them thieves, and I wish there was a better word.) The whole thing leads Kat back into a life of crime - her dad needs her help as a mean crime boss threatens his life as he assumes Kat’s dad stole his paintings and he tasks Kat with the job of stealing them back, which she obviously accepts because who wouldn’t try to help their family?

I loved this book so much. It was all so fun and the jumping from location to location was incredible. I loved the crew Kat put together and I hope that’s a feature in the next two books and I LOVE Hale. I am desperate to know his name, but I assume that will be a running joke through the series. I’m intrigued to see if they also keep up the part of the mysterious Visili Romani. I have a few ideas who it may be but I have no idea if I’m correct.

This was honestly such a fun novel. I’ve not had this much fun reading in a while and it’s so nice to read something that’s light and fun with a bit of thrill added into the mix also. I can’t wait to see what this group gets up to next time, and I just love Ally Carter’s writing. I have no idea why it’s taken me so long to read one of her books but believe me when I say I am now going to devour everything she’s ever written so fast, because Heist Society was incredible!

[readingwithwrin]

"She almost believed him. She almost wondered if he believe it himself. But Kat had learned at a very young age that thieves live and die based on perception
her whole life was a lesson in sleight of hand. If someone thought her father had the paintings, then the truth wasn't going to save him."

Heist Society is exactly what I needed. It was a fun, fast paced read with mystery and a little bit of history mixed in.

We follow Kat who has left the family business to get a formal education... Which she does for all of three months before Hale gets her expelled because
her dad needs help. He's being framed for something he didn't do, something he had no way of doing because he was doing a different heist some place else.
Unfortunately Mr. Tuccone wont believe him and wants his paintings back at all costs or her father will be in trouble. So while her dad can't do anything
due to Interpol finding him it's up to Kat, Hale, Gabrielle and the rest of the young crew to find them and prove her fathers innocence.

While this may seem like an easy task the person who took them is using a Alias that only gets used by very important people to take very important things.
Along the way they find out what paintings there looking for exactly and where they came from. Which lead to a whole new morale choice of giving them back to Mr. Tuccone or to give them back to their rightful owners that should have never had them taken away.


Throughout this story you could tell how Kat really struggled at times to make sure she was doing the right thing even though what her family does for a living isn't exactly the most legal thing. She want's to be a good person and do right by people and set things right, all while protecting her family.

I really appreciated the fact that Carter didn't throw a love triangle in our faces, while you could sense that it might have happened it didn't. I
do think there will be some romance in the next few books, I doubt it will become the main storyline or take anything away from the rest of the story. I do hope she ends up with the right one though and that she doesn't want to long to realize who likes her.

See more reviews like this on my blog

[celinenyx]

3.5 Stars

Kat is the offspring of a thieving family, and she's one of the best and youngest thieves in the world. She has decided to step out of the family business and have a sort of regular life, until her father gets suspected of a crime he didn't commit.

Heist Society is like Ocean's Eleven in book form. It doesn't make any logic sense, but it's just so damn cool. Don't we all sometimes wish we had such awesome thieving skills? That we climb through air vents and act all Mission Impossible? Heist Society uses that fascination and provides some good old wish-fulfilling fun.

Ms Carter has an easy and straight to the point writing style. The strength of the book is the plot that runs like well-oiled clockwork. There are no scenes that could have been cut out, or moments that bring the speed down. Days till deadline steadily tick away, heightening excitement. It's so easy to read this book in just one sitting because you really feel like you're moving towards something.

The thieving family provides the usual comic relief and internal struggles. Kat especially struggles with the older generation (her uncle and father), and feels torn between being with her family and having a normal life. There is also some romantic tension going on with billionaire-gone-thief Hale.

My only problem with Heist Society was that the story wasn't memorable for me. Even minutes after finishing, the story started to fade. There was no lasting impression of it at all, even though I really enjoyed myself while reading it. Heist Society is perfect for an afternoon of fun, but I'm not yet fully convinced to love the characters. Maybe the next book, Uncommon Criminals will remedy that.

[nitzan_schwarz]

ALSO POSTED ON MY BLOG; AFTERWORDS

For a while, I've been meaning to read a Carter book. She just seemed like one of those must-read authors to me, you know? Between her Gallagher Girls series and Heist Society, Heist Society caught my attention. I just liked the idea of a young thief better than a school for spies (too much like Spy Kids, for me). I'm not entirely sure I made the right choice.

Because while I enjoyed the idea of this story, I was far from thrilled with the execution.

Heist Society begins at a prestigious school - and the expulsion of one student. Her name is Katarina Bishop, but everybody besides her great Uncle Eddie call her Kat -- including her best friend (and possibly more) Hale and their crew; the brothers, Simon and Gabrielle.

Throughout the entire read, I kept wondering who the hell are these people? All these characters appear one moment, disappear the second, return the next - but we never learn about them. They are so underdeveloped, we know practically nothing about them or their pasts, why they do what they do, nothing! We very occasionally see unexplained glimpses, little references to things we don't know.

The characters are very flat, in that way, and as I never felt like I knew them - I never invested in them either. All we know about them is what's happening to them right now, making them just two dimensional--if not one dimensional--decorations. 

The trickiest part in regards to this book is the writing. I liked certain aspects of it, and hated others.

I liked: - how Carter went from the present to the past or the future for a second, giving extra information and sometimes even outright telling us what to pay attention to. To me, it was an element that kept me reading and interested.

-How Carter kept dropping bombs out of nowhere, withholding information until a certain point. It kept the read interesting because you knew Kat found something - but you have to read on to find out what.

-How the pov switched between the various characters while in operation, so we could see all the position and roles. It flowed perfectly and made the whole thing a lot more interesting.

I didn't like: - how Carter jumped placed. One moment we're in England, the next Paris, the third New York, and it's all too fast, too abrupt and without explanation. You never once saw the travel, instead you were teleported in space with no concept of time or culture to it. In fact, if Carter hadn't written the location's name each time I would've never known we were someplace else.

- The counting clock, making me feel like I was dropped in the middle of a 24 episode or something.

-How even the action wasn't exciting, to me.

It wasn't the fun read it was supposed to be, you know? 

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Old version
2.5 Stars

Before Reading
When I first read the summary of Heist Society, it appealed to me more than her "Gallagher Girls" series. To be honest, I'm not too sure why. I guess I just liked the idea of a young thief better than the idea of a school for spies (Sounds too much like Spy Kids, if you know what I mean. Liked those movies when I was younger, laughed at the idea of going to the new one today).
For a long time I wanted to try one of Carter's books, and so I chose this one.
Not entirely sure I made the right choice.

If you want to read the full reviews; the whys, the hows and the whos, go to my blog: Drugs Called Books

[notajammiedodger]

I really, really enjoyed this book :) It was a very enjoyable read. I loved reading about teenage thieves, that was really different and fun for me. The characters and all round story were written very well.
I loved all of the side characters as well. Hamish and Angus were really fun and hilarious, and Gabrielle reminded me a lot of Izzy from The Mortal Instruments series. She is really kick arse crawl-through-a-vent-and-come-out-looking-fantastic-still kind of girl. Hale was a very loveable male lead, he's rich and cocky, but it really suits him.
I loved this book and I would definitely recommend it :)

This review is also on my blog The Confessions of a Book Nerd :)

[inlibrisveritas]

I didn’t expect to enjoy the book very much, it seemed like an odd concept to me. However I was pleasantly surprised. I decided to listen to this on audio book version and really enjoyed it, possibly more. A few characters I know I wouldn’t have liked if I had simply read it, but having the voices for them really made me like nearly all the characters.

Kat Bishop is a wonderful main character, and I thought her relationships with the other characters to be really believable. I also really loved Hale, he just oozes cool and is so smooth, and I’m glad with how his relationship with Kat was at the end of the book. The other characters are just as enjoyable and each have their own flare that they add to the group, overall even though they are different from one another they are the perfect team. The fact that she and her “family” are thieves never actually came off as unbelievable either, which is fairly impressive considering the scale of the robberies mentioned in this book. There is a lot of detail put into the book and it all helps add structure to the story, though the paintings mentioned aren’t real the history behind them holds some truth.I do look forward to the second one, and I really hope it holds up to the this one. I don’t really see this a series material even though I enjoyed it, so I’m curious to say the least. This is one of the few YA books that have truly matched up to the hype that surrounds them, and for once I’m actually happy I read it. It’s proof that not all YA is as mindless as it seems.

The audio books narrator was wonderful though at first I doubted her talents, but when I got use to listening I realized that anyone who can do that many accents in a male-esque voice was talented. I might even listen to the second one.

I do recommend this book too anyone who enjoys YA, or lighter crime fiction. It’s not to bad as far as maturity ratings go so it’s good for younger teens as well.

[boghunden]

I expected this book to be an okay book for younger people, and that I would find it somewhat boring. I wasn't really looking forward to reading it, to be honet. When I got through the first 25 pages, it picked up though, and I started to actually like the book. There isn't much to the story and the writing is kind of childish, but it's an easy read when you're feeling sick.

The story was predictable, but still had its surprises, which made it an okay reading experience. I read this in just one day - and I wasn't feeling well - so that would mean that this was a good book. I'm not sure why I liked it, if it was the story, the humor or the writing.

I think this book's the right one for you, if you're between 14 and 16.