Six outcasts pull an impossible heist — and the deadliest danger is the love none of them will admit to.
- Score
- 84.7
- Spice
- 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️Sweet
- POV
- multi
- Ending
- HEA / HFN
Tropes
Content warnings
Curated signals, not an exhaustive guarantee.
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What readers think
Readers overwhelmingly praise the ensemble cast and the way Bardugo reveals each character's backstory through perfectly timed flashbacks — Kaz and Inej's relationship in particular is cited as one of the most emotionally affecting slow-burns in YA fantasy. The Ocean's Eleven-meets-high-fantasy heist premise is widely seen as the series' greatest strength: propulsive, clever, and endlessly re-readable. The most consistent criticism is that the book front-loads a great deal of world-building and ensemble introduction, making the first quarter slower than the rest; some readers also find that with six POVs, not all voices feel sufficiently distinct. A minority of critics flag the morally dark content as tonally heavier than standard YA, which functions as a feature for some and a warning for others. The Goodreads rating sits at approximately 4.44 stars across 400,000+ ratings, placing it among the most beloved YA fantasy novels of the 2010s.
Read it if
- · Readers who love ensemble casts and heist narratives where every character has a vital, irreplaceable role
- · Fans of slow-burn romance defined by longing and emotional withholding rather than heat
- · Anyone who wants grimdark-adjacent fantasy with a found-family heart and crackling ensemble banter
Skip it if
- · You want spicy or explicit romance — there is none; physical intimacy is almost entirely off-page
- · You prefer a single-protagonist narrative rather than six rotating POVs
- · Dark themes including human trafficking, forced drug dependency, and torture are hard limits for you
If you liked this
- · For fans of Ocean's Eleven — a masterclass heist where the fun is watching the crew outmanoeuvre everyone
- · For fans of The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss — morally grey protagonist, rich world-building, deliberate pacing
- · For fans of An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir — dark fantasy, slow-burn romance, brutal stakes
- · For fans of Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson — ensemble crew, impossible heist, magic system that matters
In this series
Part of Six of Crows — read in order:
Full series profile & spice/trope breakdown →Which dark romantasy heroine are you? Five choices in a forest that wants you dead.
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