Little Thieves The astonishing fantasy fairytale retelling of The Goose Girl

Little Thieves by Margaret Owen peeked my interest because it is a retelling of the rather unknown Grimm fairytale The Goose Girl and I always really like retellings. The protagonist Vanja is a servant of Princess Gisele until she decides to steal Gisele‘s life and takes her place. Now she lives among the nobility but at the same time she is a thief and uses every chance to enrich herself. Vanja is a very unlikeable character and the book even starts with “Once upon a time, there was a horrible girl ...” . Furthermore, her adoptive parents are the personifications of death and fortune and she has to complete tasks for them. And this is also how she encounters the other characters in the story and it introduced several plot lines. While this was gripping sometimes it got a bit too much for me and rather created a distance to the story for me. There was always a certain eeriness and darkness to the book and you never knew what was going to happen next. Vanja cannot proceeded like this forever and when she crosses the wrong god, she has to face all her wrongdoings. Overall, Little Thieves was a good fantasy with an intriguing concept and atmosphere, but I couldn’t fully connect with the characters on a deeper lever. If you like fairytale retellings, you can definitely check this story out. 3 stars. (ARC kindly provided in exchange for a review.)