THE FRAME-UP by Gwenda Bond – Review

I received this book for free from the Publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

The Frame-Up by Gwenda Bond
Published by Del Rey on February 13 2024
Genres: Adult, Fantasy
Pages: 352
Format: ARC
Source: Publisher
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The nitty-gritty: Magic, art forgery and heists make up the plot of Gwenda Bond’s latest, a fun mash-up with mixed results.

I ended up having a lot of fun with The Frame-Up, despite a few issues with pacing and some of the world building elements. Gwenda Bond has written a magical heist story with a few unexpected surprises, and while it’s heavier on heist and lighter on magic, I ended up enjoying most of it.

Danielle Poissant comes from a family of art thieves, and is in fact one herself. She’s also a master forger, having learned from a young age how to copy famous paintings. Her replicas always fool even the most trained eye due to the fact that she uses a sort of “persuasion” magic in her art that makes people believe they are looking at the real thing.

But ten years ago everything changed when Dani agreed to help an FBI agent catch her mother during one such heist. Maria Poissant went to jail, and Dani was shunned by the rest of the crew—Rabbit, Mia and Elliott—when she betrayed her mother. None of them has spoken to her since then, until Dani is approached by a man named Archer, who wants to enlist her help stealing a painting from a highly secure private collection, a collection that’s about to hit the auction block. Dani knows she can’t pull off such a complex heist on her own, so she decides to ask her old friends for help.

Rabbit, Mia and Elliott reluctantly agree to help steal the painting, but Dani soon realizes this job is going to be much harder and more dangerous that she first thought. For one thing, there’s Archer, who used to be Maria’s partner (awkward). And when Dani sees the painting she’s supposed to steal, she’s shocked to discover it’s a portrait of Archer himself. Not only that, but it seems to be imbued with powerful magic, connected in odd ways to the rest of the collection. Why does Archer want the painting so badly? What’s Maria’s involvement? And can she trust her crew? The clock is ticking—Dani has only nine days to plan and pull off the heist.

So that’s the gist of the story, although there is a lot more going on, maybe too much. One reason I didn’t rate this higher is that the first half of the book comes across as scattered, with too many side plots, too many characters, and not enough focus on what’s really important: planning the heist, and how Archer fits into the story. One side plot in particular was completely unnecessary, in my opinion, where someone tries to steal a different painting from the collection right before the auction. Bond has a lot to cover in that first half, though, which may be why it felt so slow. She’s laying out her magical world building, giving us the backstory on how Maria ended up in jail, and introducing a bunch of characters. There’s also a romance side plot involving Dani, Elliott and Brad Hackworth (who just inherited his dad’s valuable art collection and is the one holding the auction). The romance was almost a throwaway, though, and I’m wondering if the story would have been better without it (although based on the cover, the publisher is probably trying to market this as fantasy romance). Still, if you’re here for the romance, I doubt this book will scratch that itch.

Some of my favorite elements weren’t explored enough for my taste and I just wanted more. For example, the magic. Bond doesn’t go too deep with her explanations, and the characters’ magic abilities seem all over the place. Dani can “influence” what people see through her art (which is a cool idea!). Rabbit is good with electronics and can turn surveillance cameras on and off and some other techy stuff. Mia doesn’t have magic at all. And then there’s the art collection, which has it’s own strong magic, the purpose of which is never really explained. I also loved the scenes that show Dani painting her forgeries and the process of planning a heist (they basically switch the forgery with the real painting). Many of these scenes gave me an Ocean’s Eleven vibe and were very well done, but they were often buried under unnecessary filler. I have to give a shout out to my favorite underutilized character in the story, Dani’s border collie Sunflower (named after the Van Gogh painting!), who is hyper trained and a very good dog, but unfortunately feels more like a prop that anything else.

But now for the good stuff. Once we find out who (or what) Archer actually is, the story really takes off, and the second half of The Frame-Up delivers big time. Dani ends up finding an old journal written by a great-great ancestor that explains Archer’s true nature and how he’s connected to the portrait of himself—and therefore, why he wants it so badly. I loved these epistolary sections, written in 1894 by a French woman named Maeve, and I sort of wish they had been a more central part of the story. Dani has an interesting connection to Maeve, and honestly, I would have loved to know Maeve better, she was such a fascinating character. The final scenes involving the heist and what happens to Archer were both funny and thrilling and definitely worth the price of admission. And despite some of the earlier confusion and the odd love triangle with Dani, Brad and Elliott, I loved the way Bond resolved all her different plot points. I don’t think this is the start to a series, but who knows? There’s enough material for an interesting sequel, in my opinion, and yes, I’d definitely read it.

Big thanks to the publisher for providing a review copy.