A con artist's invented god turns out to be alarmingly real, forcing her into a fake betrothal and a very real reckoning.
- Score
- 78.3
- Spice
- 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️Mild
- POV
- first
- Ending
- HEA / HFN
Tropes
Content warnings
Curated signals, not an exhaustive guarantee.
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What readers think
Readers consistently praise Vanja's razor-sharp first-person voice and her wry humor, which keeps the story propulsive even when themes get heavy. The folklore-drenched worldbuilding and thoughtful handling of demi-ace representation and consent earn repeated mention. Reviewers love how Vanja's trauma around abandonment and family is woven organically into the plot. The main criticism is that the episodic structure feels slightly looser than the first book, and the cliffhanger ending frustrates readers who expected more resolution. A handful of reviewers note the sexual content is unusually frank for YA.
Read it if
- · Readers who want a morally complex, funny heroine running cons on gods
- · Fans of slow-burn romance with genuine emotional weight and ace/demi representation
- · Those who love fairy-tale retellings laced with dark folklore and Wild Hunt mythology
Skip it if
- · You haven't read Little Thieves — this is a direct sequel with heavy continuity
- · You want a tidy, satisfying ending — book ends on a significant cliffhanger
- · You dislike episodic quest structures where tension resets between set-pieces
If you liked this
- · For fans of Six of Crows who want a solo morally-grey thief heroine with more fairy-tale flavor
- · Like The Bear and the Nightingale but warmer, funnier, and more romantically charged
- · For readers who loved Little Thieves and want higher personal stakes and darker mythology
In this series
Part of Little Thieves — read in order:
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