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Summary
Summary
My name is Danielle. I'm eighteen. I've been stealing things for as long as I can remember.
Dani has been trained as a thief by the best--her mother. Together, they move from town to town, targeting wealthy homes and making a living by stealing antique silver. They never stay in one place long enough to make real connections, real friends--a real life.
In the beach town of Heaven, though, everything changes. For the first time, Dani starts to feel at home. She's making friends and has even met a guy. But these people can never know the real Dani--because of who she is. When it turns out that her new friend lives in the house they've targeted for their next job and the cute guy is a cop, Dani must question where her loyalties lie: with the life she's always known--or the one she's always wanted.
Reviews (4)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 10 Up-Danielle, 18, has been a thief all her life. Moving from town to town, she and her mom stay around only long enough to canvas the rich and steal their silver. When she was 15, they moved on at Danielle's request, after she had sex for "the first and only time" with her mother's 20-year-old boyfriend. It's a lifestyle the teen is used to, but she's beginning to long for something more. She wants roots, friends, and a place to call home. When they hit the small resort town of Heaven, Danielle knows the routine. Her mom will chat up the men for information and she, now using the name Sydney, is supposed to do the same with her peers. Only something goes wrong, and "Sydney" begins to make friends with the mark, flirt with a local cop, and generally do everything her mom's always told her to avoid. And when it's time for the heist, Danielle is no longer sure she can follow her mom's demands. This story is deceptively touching. Danielle and her mother are both fully developed, as are the secondary characters of Allison (the friend) and Greg (the young cop). The overriding theme of living up to a parent's expectations instead of following your own path is universal, but the twist of a family of thieves gives the story originality.-Heather E. Miller, Homewood Public Library, AL (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Horn Book Review
Eighteen-year-old Danielle and her mother are con artists and thieves. They roll into the seaside town of Heaven where Dani, despite her best efforts, is befriended by an overly trusting rich girl and a handsome cop with a complicated past. Dani's sharp, clipped narration effectively reflects her precarious situation--both physical and emotional--in this coming-of-age story. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
Other teens spend their evenings eating home-cooked meals and trudging through homework; Danielle, 18, has always lived on the run with her professional-thief mother, memorizing floor plans of estate homes and quickly calculating the worth of silver place-settings. When they arrive in Heaven, a quaint, affluent New England beach town, the lonely girl thinks it is just one more stop on an endless road to nowhere. While Danielle is meant to be gathering information on the Donaldson mansion, she inadvertently becomes chummy with Allison Donaldson, enters into a secret romance with Greg, a cop, and imagines the freedom of friends, love and a place to call home. Although her mother's persistent cough telegraphs the book's ending and makes it awfully convenient for Danielle finally to take root and realize her own dreams, teens will focus on the story's real crime--a stolen life. The fast-paced, conversational first-person narration makes for good escapist entertainment for chick-lit readers. (Fiction. YA) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Eighteen-year-old Danielle aka Sydney, Rebecca, or whatever alias her mother chooses has been stealing since she can remember. She and her theft-savvy mother move from town to town, mining the successful men whom her mother attracts for information that allows them to find and rob the toniest homes. Dani has no school, no friends, and no home until she and her mother land in Heaven, a small, wealthy beachfront town where Dani realizes what it is like to have a best friend and also a boyfriend, who just happens to be a cop. Scott tells a surprising story that features a mature teen who longs for the straight and narrow, even as the adults around her profit from crime and corruption. Dani's first-person narrative includes a few winking references to the lucrative life theft can garner, which feel like odd, misguided shifts from the story's strongest message that Dani is a brave teen who can and does shape a strong future for herself.--Bradburn, Frances Copyright 2008 Booklist