The Good Thief by Hannah Tinti.✔✔✔✔

This is another book that's been on my list for over two years, not because I didn't choose to read it, but because I couldn't find it, either in book stores or in libraries, so I found and bought it on Kindle Store. I read it in just under two days - a quick, easy read, but also hard to put down.

Ren lives as an orphan at a monastery until a stranger, Benjamin Nab, comes and takes him. Nab is a con man, telling him he is Ren's long-lost brother, but it soon is apparent that Nab takes him more for the fact that Ren is missing his left hand - a definite entertainment value with the many thieves, liars, cut-throats and double-crossers the two meet in their adventures. Ren takes well to this new life, even as he remembers the moral values instilled in him back at the orphanage, which was not the most ideal place to grow up by any means.

It is a kind of dark fairy tale- I envisioned lots of dark colours, twisting branches, cold cellars, sterile hospitals and dingy factories, like the mousetrap factory where ugly girls work fashioning mousetraps - but I thoroughly enjoyed it, and would happily recommend it to anyone. It's listed as a young adult book, but is equally suitable for adults.