Thieves' Gambit

Kayvion Lewis’s young adult (YA) novel Thieves’ Gambit (2023) is a heist thriller. The story follows Rosalyn “Ross” Quest, the 17-year-old heir to a world-renowned family of thieves. Longing for a normal life away from her family’s criminal enterprise, Ross plans to run away. However, when a job goes wrong and her mother is kidnapped, Ross must enter the Thieves’ Gambit—a dangerous, globetrotting competition pitting the world’s best young thieves against each other to win a wish—to save her. The novel explores themes including The Paradox of Trust in a World of Deception, Navigating the Weight of Family Legacy, and The Illusory Promise of Freedom.

Lewis is a former youth services librarian from Louisiana with family in the Bahamas, a background that informs the protagonist’s cultural identity. The novel was a New York Times bestseller, an Amazon Best Book of the Month and a Kids’ Indie Next Pick. A film adaptation is in development. The novel is the first in a duology, followed by the sequel Heist Royale.

This guide refers to the 2024 Penguin Random House paperback edition.

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of graphic violence, physical abuse, emotional abuse, illness or death, and cursing.

Plot Summary

During a heist in Kenya, 17-year-old master thief Rosalyn “Ross” Quest and her mother, Rhiannon, steal a valuable vase, forcing Ross to betray a lonely cat to escape. Back home in the Bahamas, Ross longs for a normal life and secretly applies to a gymnastics camp, but Rhiannon forbids it. Instead, Rhiannon forces Ross into a last-minute heist on Paradise Island. Ross plans to use the job as an opportunity to run away, but the heist goes wrong. Rhiannon is captured, and Ross is forced to escape alone. The captor demands a $1 billion ransom within a month. Desperate, Ross accepts a mysterious invitation to the Thieves’ Gambit, a high-stakes competition whose prize is a single wish, seeing it as her only hope to save her mother.

Ross is drugged and flown to an unknown location. She wakes in a locked room for her first test. After escaping, she meets the other competitors, including her childhood rival, Noelia Boschert, and a charming British thief, Devroe Kenzie. An organizer known as Count explains that for Phase One, the nine remaining contestants must steal one of fifteen artifacts from a museum in Cannes, France. In the museum, Ross discovers many of the targets are decoys. Wary of a past betrayal by Noelia, Ross refuses an alliance with Devroe. Her first two attempts to steal an artifact are thwarted by other teams. She then fights Noelia for the Empress’s Ring and secures it, only to be ambushed by Noelia’s teammate, Adra. In the ensuing chaos, a guard shoots another competitor, Yeriel Antuñez. Adra steals the ring from Ross and escapes with Noelia. Ross chooses to save the wounded Yeriel, leading her through a secret exit. Outside, Devroe and his teammate, Kyung-soon Shin, rescue them. Before being taken to a hospital, Yeriel gives Ross the artifact she had stolen, allowing Ross to pass the phase.

For Phase Two, the contestants are split into two teams of four and must steal a golden Egyptian sarcophagus. Ross is teamed with Devroe, Kyung-soon, and an American thief named Mylo Michaelson. On a train to Paris, the teams agree to a temporary truce. During the ride, Ross and Devroe share a vulnerable moment over their deceased fathers. Count interrupts with a surprise “penalty game” to acquire a government official’s phone. The truce ends, and after a tense game of passing the phone between them to evade a security search, Ross’s team wins. In Cairo, the team devises a plan for the sarcophagus heist: identify the auction bidder with the weakest security, ensure that bidder wins, and hijack the sarcophagus during transport. At the auction preview, they discover the British Museum is bidding via a proxy with an astronomical budget. Devroe proposes using special drug-dispensing jewelry to incapacitate the museum’s proxy while influencing their own target, a wealthy socialite, to win. However, Ross is ambushed by Noelia and her teammate, Taiyō Itō, who cuff her to a balcony railing. They reveal they knew the plan by planting a bug on Ross’s jacket during the train game and steal her drug-dispensing bracelet to execute the plan themselves. After escaping, Ross finds the sarcophagus already sold and Devroe drugged. She sneaks into the transport’s destination warehouse by hiding on the truck’s undercarriage and discovers her team bound by Noelia’s team. Noelia’s team leaves and Ross and Mylo reveal they anticipated issues. They acquired a replica sarcophagus from protesters and allowed Noelia’s team to escape with the fake, while they successfully secured the real one.

Back at the hotel, a still-drugged Devroe confesses that his feelings for Ross are genuine. The next day, a sober Devroe confirms his feelings, and they share their first kiss; he states his wish is to find his missing mother. The teams wait for results of Phase Two. Count announces that only Ross and Noelia will advance, they each can save one remaining competitor. Noelia chooses Taiyō, and reluctantly Ross chooses Devroe. Count reveals the final phase: Each competitor must steal a person. Ross’s target is Noelia’s younger brother, Nicholi. Horrified, Ross calls her mother for advice. Rhiannon coldly encourages the kidnapping, leading Ross to realize her mother won the Gambit years ago by doing the same. Shattered, Ross secretly teams up with Noelia to blackmail the organizers using information Nicholi has gathered at his boarding school. At Ross’s insistence, Devroe shares that his target is Taiyō’s brother. As Ross retrieves the blackmail material, Taiyō kidnaps Nicholi. Ross realizes Devroe, who was supposed to be tailing Nicholi, is missing. She returns to find Noelia tied up; Noelia reveals Devroe attacked her and stole the address for Ross’s aunt, Jaya. Ross understands Devroe’s true target was always her aunt and that he has been lying to her.

Ross arrives in Nassau and is summoned by Count to an unfinished hotel ballroom filled with the organizers. Count declares Devroe the winner and publicly confirms Ross’s realization: Her mother orchestrated the fake kidnapping with the organizers to manipulate Ross. Rhiannon even planned with the organizers in advance, offering $500 million for Jaya’s safe return, though demanding $1 billion from Ross for her own “kidnapping.” Devroe reveals that his mother entered the Gambit to save his father’s life. However, she lost to Rhiannon, and Devroe joined this year’s Gambit seeking revenge on the Quest family. Count offers Devroe his wish: to have Rhiannon or the entire Quest family killed. Torn between his desire for revenge and Ross’s plea, Devroe chooses to save his wish for later, sparing Ross’s family. The organizers agree to release Ross’s aunt, but require both the ransom payment and Ross’s acceptance of a mandatory, year-long contract as one of their primary thieves, forcing her to work alongside Devroe. Ross accepts, ending the competition with Ross and Devroe as bitter enemies and reluctant partners. Devroe’s unspent, vengeful wish hangs between them.