Six of Crows

The Barrel is the part of town controlled by warring gangs. The part people avoid if they can afford to, unless they have illegal tastes and nefarious intentions. Kaz came to the barrel as a broken child, but now he practically rules it. His path to the top wasn't pretty and he's done a lot to earn his reputation as a monster. When a richly rewarding job is offered to him, he sees the possibility not just to become wealthy enough to leave the barrel behind, but to slake his long-nursed thirst for revenge. The job is impossible, of course, so if he has any chance of succeeding and surviving he'll need a crew that's the best of the worst: “A gambler, a convict, a wayward son, a lost Grisha, a Suli girl who had become a killer, a boy from the Barrel who had become something worse.” “Six people, but a thousand ways this insane plan could go wrong.”

I loved everything about this book from the rag-tag crew of misfits to the daring heist plot. The characters were fully developed and diverse including different races, sexual orientations, and physical abilities. The shifting perspective really allowed me to get a sense of each character and their struggles and made them feel very real and dear to me. It also helped create suspense because each character's knowledge was incomplete so seeing who knew what allowed me to piece together the plot in a way that was fun. 

Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo

Erica's Picks
8th & up
​Tags: adventure, crime caper, fantasy, LGBTQ, people of color

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