Format: Hardcover, 336 pages
Release Date: August 25, 2020
Publisher: Swoon Reads
Source: Publisher
Genre: Young Adult / Thrillers & Suspense
A teen forger and thief forms a criminal crew from her high school friends (and crush) to perform a series of heists leading to the location of her missing mother in this action-packed contemporary YA novel.
The only real crime is getting caught.
By day, seventeen-year-old Fiona Spangler runs small cons for her ritzy prep school classmates, getting them out of tests and forging fake hall passes. But by night, Fiona joins her dad on riskier heists: Stealing back the clue-filled forgeries her mom scattered across the country before she disappeared. Fiona desperately hopes that her mother will be waiting at the end of the scavenger hunt she left behind.
And they are SO close. Just three more heists remain, but then disaster strikes when Fiona's dad is captured by the FBI. Desperate to finish the job and save what's left of her family, Fiona assembles of crew of teen criminals: a master of disguise who can transform into anyone, a talented hacker who only communicates in glares, and a rival con artist with a vendetta against—and possible crush on—Fiona.
All they have to do is perform three nearly impossible heists, solve her mother's incredibly complex clues, and evade the FBI. Easy, right?
Shana Silver's The Con Code is her sophomore follow-up to Mind Games. The Con Code is a cross between Ocean's 8, Heist Society and Gallagher Girls. 17-year old Fiona Spangler has been schooled in the many arts of forgery and theft. She can pick complicated locks, she can slip into any place without notice, she can create near perfect replica's of famous paintings, she even lives by rules she tries not to break. But, she can't forgive her mother for leaving her behind 7 years ago with a list of clues that she, her father have been trying to solve for years.
Fiona and her father are, in essence, trying to steal her mothers paintings and replace them with fakes created by Fiona in order to uncover the clues that she's left behind. Fiona and crew have replaced over 75% of the paintings with only 3 more to go before they can unravel where her mother went and why. But, trouble in the form of Colin O'Keefe arrives at her school and immediately challenges Fiona's supremacy at the school. He pushes her to the limits and even goes as far as conning the alleged super con herself.
Oh, and he's also the son of an FBI Agent Ian O'Keefe who works white collar crimes and has been searching for Lianne Spangler for years. Then all hell breaks loose when Fiona's father is arrested after accepting a rush job that sends Fiona and her friends (Natalie and Tig Ramirez) on a cross country adventure that will test the mettle and the skill sets of all players involved, including Colin who joins the merry band of misfits in order to hunt down the final 3 clues. The four join a bus tour from California to New York where they have to avoid being caught by the FBI and other authorities.
There is a bit of twist while they are on the run which makes Fiona think about why she wants her mother back when she walked away without looking back. Overall, this is a fun story. I loved Fiona. I loved her relationship with her father, especially the ending which I won't spoil. I really liked Natalie the constant in motion disguise guru. Tig is also wonderfully brilliant character who has eyes only for Natalie and doesn't say a whole lot throughout the book. She prefers to use emoji's. Fiona and Colin are a twisted couple. He isn't as perfect as one would believe. He does some dumb things, but in the end, everyone has to play a part.
In my humble opinion, Fiona makes the correct choice in the end. She has her father who has never once turned his back on her, she has her best friends Natalie and Tig, and now she has a boyfriend who she can go on adventures with if she doesn't hang up her tools and her cons first.
