The Good Thief by Hannah Tinti
If you are in the market for a book that reads like a classic, but don’t want to deal with all those long, twiddly words or overly verbose descriptions, Hannah Tinti’s The Good Thief is the book for you. The story focuses around Ren, a young orphan who dreams of being claimed by a long lost parent or sibling, but is instead adopted by, and becomes accomplice to, a thief. Along the way we also meet the drunk, the giant, and the goodhearted landlady that are standards in classic fiction. And, the plot does have all the little twists and side characters that tell us we are reading “literature.” However, don’t think for one second that Tinti is relying on a formula to entertain us. The characters are not flat or cliched. The plot twists are not the ones I was expecting. The story never got stale or bogged down; I kept on wondering how it was all going to come together. Overall, a great read.
