Early Review: The Diamond Thief by Sharon Gosling

The Diamond Thief
Sharon Gosling
Release: October 1, 2014
Reviewer: Rose Red
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No-one performs on the circus trapeze like 16-year-old Remy Brunel. But Remy also leads another life, prowling through the backstreets of Victorian London as a jewel thief. When she is forced to steal one of the world's most valuable diamonds, she uncovers a world of treachery and fiendish plots.

Review by Rose Red:
Rémy Brunel is a trapeze artist in the circus; and a popular one at that. Unbeknownst to others, she is also a professional thief. Being a trapeze artist definitely comes in handy. Things start going wrong as soon as her master sends her to steal the Darya-ye Noor diamond.

We soon meet Thaddeus Rec, an officer at Scotland Yard, who is assigned to guard two very famous diamonds that are stored in the Tower of London. Of course, one of them is the diamond that Rémy is supposed to steal.

On the night of the exhibition, the diamond disappears. But neither Thaddeus nor Rémy have it in their possession. Due to dissatisfaction on both sides, they end up teaming up to get it back.

I wanted to like this book, and I mean REALLY like it. Come on! Steampunk circus! Trapeze artist who is also a jewel thief! And a Scotland Yard detective with a mystery! What’s not to like? Well, a few things it turns out. It ended up being just an okay story for me. The beginning was good and really captured my attention. I was eager to see where the story would go and it ended up just letting me down

The pacing was off for the entire book. In the beginning, the pacing of the book is really fast. Meet Rémy. Meet Thaddeus. Go steal the diamond. Boom. Boom. Boom. Then all of a sudden, the pacing changed and became annoyingly slow.

Not only was the pacing off, there were just too many things the author tried to shove in the story. It started off with Rémy stealing the diamond, but then went into slavery. And then a really random curse was thrown in among other things. It was way too much for one book and it really took away from the story. It was almost like all of these random things were being thrown into the story to entice us to become more invested in the plot. But in reality, it just turned me off.

The story was really predictable. There were a couple plot twists in the novel. I'm using the term "plot twist" loosely in this case because Rémy hinted at them so much that it it wasn't a surprise when they actually happened.

Another problem I had with this book was that I couldn’t connect to the characters. Their backstories were never explained even though they were hinted at. I have so many questions that were never answered. On top of not enough character development, we have another case of instalove. Can we just ban instalove in YA? There was absolutely no chemistry between Thaddeus and Rémy. They just randomly started to fall in love with each other. You can’t go from not knowing anything about someone to not being able to live without them in a matter of days.. It was very the definition of instalove.

Overall, it was an okay read and I gave it 2.5 stars. It was an interesting idea that had so much potential. It just wasn’t executed properly. Taking everything into account, The Diamond Thief doesn't take itself too seriously, which is nice. And it was kind of great reading a YA novel that has no plans to be trilogy though.


I received this eARC via Netgalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

 1/2

2.5 / 5  stars