Review: Perfect Scoundrels by Ally Carter

Perfect Scoundrels (Heist Society #3) by Ally Carter
Released: 7th February 2012
Publisher: Orchard Books (UK)
Source: Bought
Reason to read: Erm hello? Hale? Ally Carter? Need I say more
Rating: 5/5 

**This is the third book in the series meaning the synopsis and review will have spoilers for the earlier books**
 
Goodreads description:

Katarina Bishop and W.W. Hale the fifth were born to lead completely different lives: Kat comes from a long, proud line of loveable criminal masterminds, while Hale is the scion of one of the most seemingly perfect dynasties in the world. If their families have one thing in common, it’s that they both know how to stay under the radar while getting—or stealing—whatever they want.

No matter the risk, the Bishops can always be counted on, but in Hale’s family, all bets are off when money is on the line. When Hale unexpectedly inherits his grandmother’s billion dollar corporation, he quickly learns that there’s no place for Kat and their old heists in his new role. But Kat won’t let him go that easily, especially after she gets tipped off that his grandmother’s will might have been altered in an elaborate con to steal the company’s fortune. So instead of being the heir—this time, Hale might be the mark.

Forced to keep a level head as she and her crew fight for one of their own, Kat comes up with an ambitious and far-reaching plan that first, she has to decide if she’s willing to save her boyfriend’s company if it means losing the boy.

My thoughts:

If you're a regular reader of my blog you will (hopefully) be aware of how much I love Ally Carter. I literally only started reading her books last year, but they're so fun and so amazing. The plots are just...well, we'll get onto that.

Perfect Scoundrels had the feel of a Heist Society book; but with much more serious themes running through it. This didn't lessen the impact or enjoyment for me at all, these books usually do feel a bit more serious because so much is riding on the success of their job and so much can go wrong, but this one felt so much more personal. With Hale's grandma and the effect that has not just on Hale but Kat and their friends. 

Hale was so different in this book and in light of what happened you cannot blame him. We got flashes of the old him, sure, but you could see the strain of everything that was happening taking its toll on Hale and it was so tragic. Partly because we lost the laid back, perpetually amused boy that we love, but mostly because Kat lost him. Kat, who was finally starting to recognise and accept her feeling for this boy, and suddenly he's not that boy anymore. He's lost to a world she doesn't fit in with, a place she cannot follow him to. It was good to see, in a way, because you could tell how much she truly does care for Hale that she was so scared of losing him, would do anything to save him. I love how at the end Kat gives him a choice. This wont make too much sense to you till you've read it, but I love that she does it, and the way that she does it. 

The plot met the level of  awesome I have come to expect from Ally Carter. Her plotlines are always so intricate and so well formulated so things are revealed at the right times for maximum impact. Things are kept from the reader, have to be, for the reveals to pack the sort of punch they pack, but you don't tend to care because you are so wrapped up in what's happening. I am always in awe at how Ally Carter manages to pull her plots off, it's almost like her pulling off her own heist, everyone has to be so precise and so delicately planned. I loved how everyone got involved in this, normally Kat and her gang are trying to keep their cons secret from the Bishop family, but this time it was special. We had Uncle Eddie, we had Kat's dad, we had EVERYONE. Even people we hadn't really met before. I loved how the Bishops closed ranks around Hale, that at a time when his own family were being fake and selfish, his adopted family were doing whatever they could to save him.

Kat was so mature in this one, I feel like sometimes she lets her emotions cloud her judgement and she did a little bit still, but it was mostly her fear of what would happen to Hale if he discovered certain things. I felt like she went into this much less stressed, much more balanced because they just had to do this for Hale, there was no time to worry about it.

You could feel the desperation a touch in this book, not just for a con to succeed but for them to have THIS con succeed, beat THIS villain, to save THIS boy and his company. It really added to the atmosphere of the book, to have this tension there. I felt so much more invested in this story because it was so much about Hale. Before, I always wanted them to succeed for them, but now I wanted them to succeed cause it was ABOUT Hale. It was so important to them and to me that everything worked out, and that connection really added to my experience of the book.

Ally Carter has fast become one of my 'must-read' authors and I really cannot express the excitement I felt at the prospect of, and whilst reading, this book. If you haven't picked up an Ally Carter book yet for whatever reason, I urge you to do so!

Contemporary Summer Interview: Ally Carter

I am SO excited for today's post...we have an inteview with one of mine and Liz's favourite contemporary authors...Ally Carter! Ally very kindly answered the questions we sent, so thank you so much =]

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Hi Ally! Thanks so much for taking the time to answer some interview questions for us, we’re both huge fans of your books and we really appreciate it.

First up…just how exactly do you go about researching how to rob an art gallery?

Well, I have a huge advantage in that I get to plan both the heist and the security system.  Robbing an art gallery is far easier when you get to play both sides.

On the topic of research, a lot of the information in both the Gallagher Girls and Heist Society series seems totally genuine (in terms of spy techniques etc) how much of this is real and how much did you invent for the purpose of the books? 

I tried to get all of the theories as close as possible, especially in the first couple of books when I was setting up the school and establishing the world.  I have never been trained as a spy (obviously) but there are a lot of declassified training manuals and other things, and I drew upon those heavily.  The very specific things (like names of devices or maneuvers) are generally made up, but the overall principles are as close as I could make them.

We’ve both read GG5 so we obviously have to ask….any hints/teasers for GG6??

I’m really excited to write GG6, I can tell you that.  When I was working on GG5 it felt very much like I was setting up a GG6 to do list.  When the book ends, Cammie knows a lot about the past, but she also has a very clear sense of what she’s going to have to do in the future.  Some people need saving; some people need taken down.  And she’s going to try to do all of it.

With GG6 being the last of the series, do you have any other projects you can tell us about?

Nothing that I can talk about just yet, but I do have a lot of ideas.  I’m just going to have to really think hard about which one is the right one to tackle as my first post-GG project.

If the characters of Gallagher Girls and Heist Society ever met, what do you think would happen?

I get this question a lot!  I honestly don’t know.  Perhaps I will have to explore it someday.  I am sure that it would depend entirely upon the circumstances.

 Can you please make Zach (for Liz) and Hale (for me) real?? (and also a little older….)

Oh, if I could do that then you girls would have to get in line!

 All the characters in both series have vey clear-cut and diverse personalities/characteristics, how hard is it to get so much depth into characters, especially the more minor ones?

Thank you.  I think I’m at a huge advantage because I have had (so far) several books to accomplish that.  Someone who has a very minor role in book one can have more significance in book two and so on.  Everyone (hopefully) gets their time to shine.

We’re currently hosting a Contemporary YA event on our blogs, what other contemporary books would you recommend for fans of the Gallagher Girls and Heist Society books (or just in general)?

If your readers haven’t yet discovered E. Lockhart then they are seriously missing out.  Her books The Boyfriend List (and later books in the series) and The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau- Banks are some of my absolute favorites and great reads for fans of my series.  I’m also currently reading Code Name Verity which a World War II spy girl story.  Super great stuff.

And finally….what’s Hale’s name??

No comment.

Thanks so much Ally!

If you're in the UK, you can win a complete set of Ally Carter books (and trust me you want to!) here. If you're outside the UK, you can win a contemp book of your choice!

Today, Liz is posting an interview with Cora Harrison, author of The Debutantes!

Review: Heist Society by Ally Carter

Heist Society (Heist Society #1) by Ally Carter
Released: 1st September 2011 (UK)
Publisher: Orchard Books
Source: From Library then Purchased
Rating: 4/5

Goodreads Description:

When Katarina Bishop was three, her parents took her to the Louvre...to case it. For her seventh birthday, Katarina and her Uncle Eddie traveled 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. Unfortunately, leaving "the life" for a normal life proves harder than she'd expected.

Soon, Kat's friend and former co-conspirator, Hale, appears out of nowhere to bring her back into the world she tried so hard to escape. But he has good reason: a powerful mobster's art collection has been stolen, and he wants it returned. Only a master thief could have pulled this job, and Kat’s father isn’t just on the suspect list, he is the list. Caught between Interpol and a far more deadly enemy, Kat’s dad needs her help.

For Kat there is only one solution: track down the paintings and steal them back. So what if it’s a spectacularly impossible job? She’s got two weeks, a teenage crew, and hopefully just enough talent to pull off the biggest heist in her family’s (very crooked) history--and, with any luck, steal her life back along the way

My thoughts:

I actually liked Heist Society more than Gallagher Girls and I LOVED GG! I found Kat a bit more humble, less cocky and self-assured than the girls in GG; yet still very competent, talented and brave. Her skills were less admirable, but they felt more organic than the super girls of the Gallagher Academy, born out of the life she lived rather than intensive schooling. 

Hale too…I liked him more than Zach. There’s something about a rich, bored playboy that I adore (Adrian Ivashkov anyone?) and it’s clear he has a great deal of emotion invested in Kat. The relationship between them was nicely complex and Ally Carter does a fantastic job of writing girls who aren’t necessarily interested in a relationship and are fairly oblivious to male attention, no matter how obvious it appears. Hale was great at not smothering Kat, yet wanting to be there to support her, help her and just generally be around her. I really liked the other characters as well; they were a total mishmash of miscreants but the group dynamic worked really well. I felt they had more of a role to play than the secondary characters of GG, who often felt well, like a supporting cast really. They were all really different and had unique personalities than came through in the writing.

Plotwise I really enjoyed it! The whole idea of robbing an art gallery was fascinating; to see how they went about it, but I also loved the pressure, the fact they struggled, did go to adults for help and were turned away forcing them to do it alone and the twists and turns that came with the plot.  I found myself getting anxious, wondering if they would pull it off. I really rooted for the characters and really wanted them to succeed even though what they were doing was totally illegal. It still felt really…moral, which is bizarre but true.  It amazes me how Ally Carter managed to come up with such a complex story , I am in awe of her storytelling abilities.

The writing is as snappy and engrossing as in Gallagher Girls, but I found it a bit more grown up, a bit less tweenie and a bit more YA if that makes sense. I loved the way certain parts of it were narrated, I can’t really explain it but it was the whole distant third person narration thing, it worked so well because it meant certain things could be hidden from the reader without it seeming obvious or odd, and yet avoided you feeling disconnected from Katarina which is something that can happen with this style of narration.

My event partner Liz is also posting her review of Heist Society today, plus you can win a complete set of Ally Carter books in our opening post