Title: Coin Heist
Author: Elisa
Ludwig
Publisher: Adaptive
Studios
Publication Date: June
10, 2014
Genre: Young
Adult
Reviewed by: Angie
Edwards
Source: Publisher
via NetGalley
My rating: 3/5
SUMMARY
The last place you’d expect to find a team of
criminals is at a prestigious Philadelphia prep school. But on a class trip to
the U.S. Mint – which prints a million new coins every 30 minutes – an
overlooked security flaw becomes far too tempting for a small group of students
to ignore.
United by dire circumstances, these unlikely allies – the slacker, the nerd, the athlete, and the "perfect" student – band together to attempt the impossible: rob the U.S. Mint. The diverse crew is forced to confront their true beliefs about each other and themselves as they do the wrong thing for the right reasons.
Elisa Ludwig's Coin Heist is a fun, suspenseful, and compelling thriller, told from the revolving perspectives of four teens, each with their own motive for committing a crime that could change all of their lives for the better—if they can pull it off.
United by dire circumstances, these unlikely allies – the slacker, the nerd, the athlete, and the "perfect" student – band together to attempt the impossible: rob the U.S. Mint. The diverse crew is forced to confront their true beliefs about each other and themselves as they do the wrong thing for the right reasons.
Elisa Ludwig's Coin Heist is a fun, suspenseful, and compelling thriller, told from the revolving perspectives of four teens, each with their own motive for committing a crime that could change all of their lives for the better—if they can pull it off.
REVIEW
One of
the reasons I added Coin Heist to my
wishlist of books I’d like to read in 2014, is because I imagined it to be a YA
version of something action-packed like the movies, Ocean’s Eleven or The Italian
Job. Reading the book summary after finishing the book, I have to admit I
feel a little cheated. Where’s the “suspense”, the “fun”, and the “compelling”
the summary has promised?!
Every time
I put the book down, I had to motivate myself to pick it back up and continue
reading; that’s why it took me so long to finish it, because I kept reading
other books in between. I can’t even say which one of the four main characters
was my favorite, because they were all relatively the same; each void of a
unique voice, just with different problems and reasons why they need the money, and all of them from different social standings.
This probably explains why I didn’t find it to be a “compelling” read.
The
missing “fun” and “suspenseful” elements are easy to explain because there
aren’t any. What’s so “fun” about reading chapters and chapters of four people
complaining about their lives? There wasn’t even any humor to be found anywhere
in this story. Warm and fuzzy feels? None. I’ll begrudgingly agree that there
is a small amount of suspense in the last few chapters when the actual heist is
going down, but I was disappointed that it was only about ten percent of the
book. The other ninety percent is to explain every character’s motivation for
wanting to rob the U.S. Mint, the little bit of romance that develops, and a
little planning for the heist a.k.a., Operation EagleFly.
However,
this was not such a bad read. A bit on the bland and dramatic side, and missing
a couple of promised elements, but not bad at all. The four different
perspectives worked well, and the writing flowed easily from one scene to the
next. It is clear that a good amount of research went into this book, and I
found everything about how the minting process works fairly interesting. I had
certain expectations of this book which weren’t met, but I do feel that there
will be many who would enjoy Coin Heist
thoroughly. I enjoyed it enough to want to read more books by this author.
An eARC
of this book was provided to me by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for
my honest opinion.
ABOUT the AUTHOR
My debut young adult
novel PRETTY CROOKED (Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins) was released in March
2012, and the sequel, PRETTY SLY, is out in March 2014. COIN HEIST, a YA
thriller, is out in June 2014 (Adaptive Studios). I live in Philadelphia with
my husband and son.
Follow us with:
No comments:
Post a Comment