Thieving Weasels by Billy Taylor

Thieving Weasels
by Billy Taylor

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Release date: August 23, 2016
Publisher: Dial Books
Genre: Thriller, YA
Hardback: 256 pages
Rating: 5

First sentence(s):
I would have killed to go to Princeton.

Zombie sighting:
The answer was always No, and by Thanksgiving we were twenty-two sleep-deprived zombies.
-chapter 1, ARC

Skip O’Rourke is dragged into one last con . . . but he doesn’t know the con’s on him in this funny, page-turning debut YA for fans of Winger and Ocean’s Eleven.

Cameron Smith attends an elite boarding school and has just been accepted to Princeton University alongside his beautiful girlfriend, Claire. Life for Cameron would be perfect, except that Cameron Smith is actually Skip O’Rourke, and Skip O’Rourke ran away from his grifter family four years ago…along with $100,000 of their “earnings” (because starting a new life is not cheap). But when his uncle Wonderful tracks him down, Skip’s given an ultimatum: come back to the family for one last con, or say good-bye to life as Cameron.

“One last con” is easier said than done when Skip’s family is just as merciless (and just as manipulative) as they’ve always been, and everyone around him is lying. Skip may have given up on crime, but there’s one lesson he hasn’t forgotten: always know your mark. And if you don’t know who your mark is . . . it’s probably you.

Witty and irresistibly readable, this standout debut will always keep you guessing.

My two-bits:

I inhaled this book on the trip home from BEA. Pretty rare for me, but the wait in the super duper long TSA line at O'Hare airport provided plenty of reading time.

This family of con artists and Cameron's struggle of to do or not to do strung me along.

What is real, who is real and who wins in the end are entertaining questions to ponder while reading this book.

The clever twists and final ending scene makes this a fun read.

About the author:

Billy Taylor is the author of Thieving Weasels, a YA thriller to be published August 23rd, 2016 by Dial Books for Young Readers, and Based on the Movie, a comic novel for adults set in the film business that Publishers Weekly called “Fast and funny.”

Before turning his hand to writing, he worked as a dolly grip on dozens of movies and TV programs including Pee-Wee’s Playhouse and My Cousin Vinny.

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* review copy courtesy of publisher at BEA 2016