Welcome to our fourth annual Readers’ Recommendation Review Week! Every year, the Kindles & Wine gals pore over the ginormous list of all of our readers’ favorite books of the year. Seriously, if the other ladies are anything like me, they read every comment and look up every book that looks interesting, rank them in a complicated fashion, and then request about 20 of them from the library and promptly get completely, but happily, overwhelmed. But I digress…
This year, I took the advice of Karin Anderson and Jennifer H. and decided to give Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo a try. Read on for my review and a giveaway opportunity!
Laura‘s Review
I was reading this book while on vacation with my sister (and blogmate), Katie. She took one look at it and was all, “THAT’s the book you chose for Readers’ Rec Week?” She has a fair point. I’m not known for my love of YA or fantasy, and the book totally has black-edged pages, so this probably did seem like an inexplicable book choice for a very late-emerging Goth phase. However, she was neglecting one very important piece of information: the possibility of a HEIST.
A heist!
I don’t know if there is anyone in the world who loves a good heist more than I do. The movie Ocean’s Eleven? Have the dialogue entirely memorized. The TV shows Burn Notice and White Collar? Have watched every episode multiple times. Literally, the front cover of the book just says “Six dangerous outcasts. One impossible heist” and I knew I had to read it.
My husband ALSO questioned my choice of book, because he knows that I tried to read the first book in Leigh Bardugo’s very popular and well-reviewed YA fantasy Grisha Trilogy, but it just very clearly wasn’t my thing. And this book is actually set in the same world as The Grisha Trilogy, so I guess you can understand his confusion. But I just said, “It’s about a heist!” and he said, “Oh. OK, then.”
So why did this one stick and the other one didn’t? Surprisingly, it WASN’T just the heist. (Although, I mean, that didn’t hurt.) One of my biggest pet peeves/problems with fantasy series is the world-building at the expense of character/plot development. Often, I think it takes too long to give all the details of a world, and authors tend to lose me because I don’t understand any of the terminology used or what the rules of the world are, so I just don’t feel invested in reading on. The big difference in this book was the AMAZING characters as well as enough plot from the very beginning to keep me going while the details of the world sharpened and fell into focus effortlessly around me.
I was immediately drawn to Kaz just from his first chapter. He is EXACTLY the kind of criminal-with-a-moral-code character I love (in the same mold as Danny Ocean, Michael Westen, and Neal Caffrey). Kaz is cocky but with good reason, and there was enough hinting at an interesting backstory and dormant demons. The book chapters alternate points of view among all 6 of the “crew,” and I thought each character was very well fleshed out. I really got a sense of their internal motivation for undertaking this crazy heist with Kaz.
Surprisingly, it wasn’t even the heist part that was my favorite! Well, OK, that’s not entirely true. I liked what the heist story line brought to the table. It was a familiar archetype that provided a structure to be able to understand the characters and their goals and motivations. Because it’s not exactly a typical heist—they are trying to “steal” something very unusual, and there are moral and ethical ramifications to it, as well as the obvious financial gain.
So what WAS my favorite part? The characters! Talk about complex! There are two characters who have the most complex relationship I have ever read about in a book—for real. I was hooked into finding out all the backstories of what turned all of these people into thieves and misfits, and I was not disappointed. Bardugo is smart, because she reveals information about their pasts a bit at a time.
I have two smallish quibbles that kept this from being a 5-star read for me. First, it was frankly a little bit too long for my taste. Some parts got really drawn out. 480 pages is pretty dang long for a YA book, and by the end, I was just sort of…ready to be done. Which sounds weird to say about a book that you enjoyed, but I just wanted a resolution. Which brings me to my next point, which you will already know about from reading the book’s details above but was a total surprise to me: It is the first book in a series. I had heard it was a “stand-alone” novel that was set in the previous Grisha world but that you didn’t necessarily need to have read The Grisha Trilogy to understand it. Which is totally true…but I didn’t know it would be the first book in a series! However, I will of course read the second book, because more Kaz and Inej and Nina and Jesper and Matthias and Wylan? Yes, please. But seriously, guys…not everything has to be a series!!!! {ducks from wrathful gaze of blogmate Sunny}
Bottom LineSix of Crows is a pretty awesome book, and if YA and/or fantasy is your jam, you should definitely pick it up. And if they aren’t your jam, but you are wildly obsessed with heist stories (like me), I bet you’ll enjoy it as well. Be warned that it is on the longer side and is the first book in an ongoing series that hasn’t been completed yet. So if you are impatient about those sorts of things, maybe wait for the entire thing to be published.
Rating: B+ (4½ stars)
Wine/Beverage Pairing: In the book, Kaz owns a club called the Crow Club, so how about a crow cocktail…whisky, lemon juice, and grenadine (although I don’t think I’d recommend having six 
).
Six of Crows Giveaway
The lovely folks at Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group are offering to give away a print copy of Six of Crows to ONE lucky Kindles & Wine reader (U.S. and Canadian residents only).
To enter for your chance to win, you must:
- Be a follower of our blog (click HERE to subscribe), AND…
- Hit the comments and tell me: Is there a story line or particular characteristic of a book that makes it an “auto-read” for you? Perhaps a certain time period or a certain relationship, like me with the crazy heist obsession? Do share!
Please note: All entrants must review and adhere to our official giveaway policy. This contest will close on Tuesday, March 29, 2016 at 11:59 PM (CDT) and the winner will be notified via email on Wednesday, March 30.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Leigh Bardugo is the #1 New York Times bestselling and USA Today bestselling author of Six of Crows (awarded starred reviews from Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, VOYA, SLJ, and the BCCB) and the Grisha Trilogy: Shadow and Bone, Siege and Storm, and Ruin and Rising.
She was born in Jerusalem, grew up in Los Angeles, graduated from Yale University, and has worked in advertising, journalism, and most recently, makeup and special effects. These days, she lives and writes in Hollywood where she can occasionally be heard singing with her band.
