"Gorgeous prose, delicious magic." - V.E. Schwab
**
YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults Selection
Kids' Indie Next Pick
Amazon Best Book
A scrappy maid must outsmart both palace nobles and Low Gods in a new YA
fantasy by Margaret Owen, author of the Merciful Crow series.**
Once upon a time, there was a horrible girl...
Vanja Schmidt knows that no gift is freely given, not even a mother's
love--and she's on the hook for one hell of a debt. Vanja, the adopted
goddaughter of Death and Fortune, was Princess Gisele's dutiful servant
up until a year ago. That was when Vanja's otherworldly mothers demanded
a terrible price for their care, and Vanja decided to steal her future
back... by stealing Gisele's life for herself.
The real Gisele is left a penniless nobody while Vanja uses an enchanted
string of pearls to take her place. Now, Vanja leads a lonely but
lucrative double life as princess and jewel thief, charming nobility
while emptying their coffers to fund her great escape. Then, one heist
away from freedom, Vanja crosses the wrong god and is cursed to an
untimely end: turning into jewels, stone by stone, for her greed.
Vanja has just two weeks to figure out how to break her curse and make
her getaway. And with a feral guardian half-god, Gisele's sinister
fiancé, and an overeager junior detective on Vanja's tail, she'll have
to pull the biggest grift yet to save her own life.
Margaret Owen, author of The Merciful Crow series, crafts a delightfully
irreverent retelling of "The Goose Girl" about stolen lives, thorny
truths, and the wicked girls at the heart of both.
