Heiress Takes All

🦇 Heiress Takes It All Book Review 🦇

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐

❓ #QOTD What's your favorite heist book or movie? ❓

🦇 "Something borrowed" is about to be the understatement of the year. After being cast out by her cheating father, Oliva Owens is ready for revenge. She'll play the part of dutiful daughter at his upcoming wedding, letting everyone see a spoiled heiress while she steals millions from his online accounts. All she needs is the passcode locked tight in his safe. With the help of an electric crew of high school students (and one former teacher), she's plotted the heist down to the second. Too bad her pleading ex, greedy Swiss cousins, father's vengeful second wife, and massive security team are in the way. Can Olivia steal her rightful inheritance right under her father's nose?

💜 I will probably read anything that comes from writing duo Emily Wibberley & Austin Siegmund-Broka, who know how to weave together a rich tapestry of plot, character development, and hard-hitting prose. A good heist story isn't easy to pull off--it's as difficult as the heist itself. Like a chess game against a worthy competitor, there are moving pieces, gambits, and traps around every corner. You need to think ahead. Wibberley and Siegmund-Broka do so with precision, giving Olivia and her crew plenty of obstacles to navigate as they try to pull off a heist in the middle of a messy, drama-filled wedding. More than the heist, I appreciate the emotional depth and development we see in Olivia throughout the story. Despite hating her father and wanting vengeance, she yearns for her father's approval. No kid can help that, even when wounds are still raw. Olivia struggles with an ex who cheated on her, the pain echoing after her father cheated on her mother. Olivia clings to her anger and thirst for revenge as a motivator throughout the book, but we do see her develop, grow, and forgive.

💙 Usually, I don't comment on covers, but I want to point on the detailing on this one. The crossed dagger cufflinks, Olivia's necklace, the chess pieces. The stark mess of red cutting against stunning, pure white, reflective of the messy con occurring during an otherwise perfectly planned wedding. Well done.

💙 The first 30% of the book was a little difficult to fall into, namely because it's more exposition than action. The entire story feels a bit more tell than show, despite the setting's opulence and potential for strong visuals. Usually, I annotate Wibberly and Siegemund-Broka's prose like crazy, but there were only a few delectable one-liners to choose from this time. I also found Olivia to be a bit...exhausting, especially since the story was in her first-person POV. She puts on the act of being a spoiled heiress, but her "true" persona isn't any more likable, even when we see dashes of empathy. I also guessed at Abigail's identity the moment she was mentioned--a great twist, but not well concealed.

🦇 Recommended for fans of Thieves' Gambit, Women of Good Fortune, Leverage, The Inheritance Games, and Ocean's 11.

✨ The Vibes ✨
♟️ Heist
♟️ Found Family
♟️ Young Adult
♟️ Family Drama
♟️ Messy Romance
♟️ Single First-Person POV
♟️ Mystery

🦇 Major thanks to the authors @wibbs_ink & @austins_b and publisher @littlebrownyoungreaders for providing an ARC of this book via Netgalley. 🥰 This does not affect my opinion regarding the book. #HeiressTakesItAll

💬 Quotes
❝ If he’s spoiled cream, I’m cotton candy laced with arsenic. ❞
❝ Forever. Forever. The syllables pound in my ears. Poem, promise, or prison sentence? ❞
❝ My heist is worth millions— this kiss is priceless. And everything priceless is dangerous. ❞