I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed.

This was one of my most anticipated 2022 releases because the idea of Chinese and Chinese Americans forming a heist team to return stolen Chinese artifacts was an interesting premise. 

Sadly, while the writing was beautiful, the plot fell short. There was so much happening between the heists that could honestly be considered filler. When the heists actually occurred, there was little to no conflict and when there was conflict, it went away just like that. Beyond that, the heists on page were so short. Take out some of the repetitive filler and give us more of the action. So much would happen off of the page that everything felt disjointed - particularly around their time in Stockholm and Paris. 

What is a heist without really conflict?

Just like the title suggests, Portrait of a Thief is a portrait of the five thieves in the way that the reader doesn't learn anything beyond surface level character information that is then repeated throughout the book. So much so that it took my attention away from the book and I lost my interest. 

The biggest downfall was the repetiveness of both the character information as well as the same conflicts happening between the characters. So much of this was repeated when those pages could've been used to give us more heists or even showing the reader the development of the relationships between the characters that we didn't get to see because that happened off page. 

I do think that the relationship between Daniel and his father was done well as well that Li did a great job of explaining the history of the art to a reader that didn't know that background. 

I cannot speak to the accuracy of the Asian American diaspora in this one, so please reach out own voices reviewers for that.