Sting by Jude Watson (review)
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- Sting by Jude Watson
Trade ed. ISBN 978-0-545-86346-9 $16.99
E-book ed. ISBN 978-0-545-86348-3 $16.99
Reviewed from galleys R Gr. 4-7
In Loot (BCCB 7/14), twins March and Jules outran the curse that should have killed them both on their thirteenth birthday; they outlived their felonious father; they outmaneuvered their traitorous aunt; and now, together with two fellow outcast friends/partners-in-crime, Darius and Izzy, they’re living easy in a lavish apartment funded by their ill-gotten gains. The sedentary life is wearing kind of thin, though, and one last heist arranged by Uncle Hamish is an inviting challenge. Stealing the cache of diamonds goes terribly wrong, leaving them holding a cursed sapphire worth immeasurably more than the diamonds if only the owner can survive the specter and curse attached to it. A buyer thinks he can work the spell out but he needs the entire set of three sapphires, so one heist turns into three, and the urgency to finish the job escalates when Darius gets outconned by a financial investor, leaving [End Page 604] the teen team flat broke. Watson delivers more than another clever heist, however, with the bonds among the group thoroughly shaken by Darius’s misstep, and with March’s struggle with conflicting memories of his father. The life of a teen thief is comically amusing here: holed up with your best buds, unencumbered by ethics and parents, and floating on a cushion of a multi-million dollar bankroll. The gullible, venal character of the kids’ marks makes the romp all the more humorous and the kids’ criminal triumphs all the more glorious, but by book’s end they’ve also come to realize they might benefit from a little schooling and a touch more discipline. Whether that signals a wrapped-up twofer or the segue to a more complex series is hard to guess; stick around to see what Watson has up her sleeve.
