-Did I enjoy it? Parts, it's well edited and has some great story moments. -Would I have liked it as a child? Conflict is necessary but there are some dark moments I find dark in a bad way, but I'm not sure what would have stood out to me at the time. Certainly I would've found the 'bad guy' frustrating in not a fun way. -Would I gift it to a child? Honestly, no. There's a running image of the exotic and dangerous Indian, which is probably accurate to the stereotypes a boy in this unnamed eastern town would have heard, but there's no effort made to contextualize or challenge that for the reader. It's upsetting, and in a new book there's no reason not to address that. ( )

author says her favorites were Dickens and Robert Louis Stevenson and it shows. Really enjoyed it
( )

A children's book for adults. There should really be more of these.. ( )

A modern Dickens homage, with orphans, hardscrabble criminals, and surprising twists to tie things up in the end. Tinti's workmanlike story is readable. While I like the idea of a new Dickensian story, Tinti works a little too hard to capture the mood and characters. It comes off less homage and more coopted. If you're going to cover Dickens' ground, you need to be blessed with uncommon skill. Tinti does a passable job but not without Dickens' shadow hovering a little too ominously over the narrative.

3 bones!!! ( )

Hannah Tinti's THE GOOD THIEF is a delightful and compelling read, the kind of novel I think of as "an entertainment," as opposed to serious literary fiction. That said, I loved it, and could not stop reading it. The protagonist is a 12 year-old orphan named Ren, who is missing one hand. It is a story filled with monks and murderers, thieves and liars, grave robbers and widows. Oh and there's a giant, and a dwarf too. And a mousetrap factory run by a cruel boss. It's a tough story to summarize, and doing that would spoil it, so I'm not even going to try. It's very Dickensian, only more. Think, say, a blend of Oliver Twist and The Princess Bride, and a young boy searching for family. Trust me. It's a humdinger of a story. You wanna lose yourself in a fantastical soup of weird characters and unlikely adventures in a bygone time? Then this is the book for you. A mesmerizing read.

- Tim Bazzett, author the memoir, BOOKLOVER ( )