City of Saints & Thieves by Natalie C. Anderson

City of Saints and Thieves, by Natalie C. Anderson, follows Christina aka Tiny Girl and her adventure throughout Africa to find her mother’s killer. Along the way, Tina finds out the truth about her mother’s past before coming to Kenya as a refugee. Tina is a thief involved in a gang called the Goondas, and she enlists her gangs help to get revenge on the man who killed her mother. But… things don’t end up going quite per plan as she learns more and more about her mother’s life.

I didn’t read the synopsis at all before reading this book, I just knew it involved a thief, and I honestly thought it would just involve a heist. But this book is so much more than that. When I first read that the setting is in Kenya, I was very surprised, but excited to read a book in this setting; as I hadn’t read any books in this setting before. I love learning about other cultures, so books set in other countries interest me. But my expectations did fall a little short. I loved the integration of the Swahili language into this book.  Besides this integration and the author stating that the setting was in Kenya, I felt that this could be set in any country, despite the war on gold. I honestly imagined Sangui City to be like any city in the United States, and it very well may be like that in the author’s mind. I expected more of a cultural influence in the book, though, and I feel as if I didn’t learn much about the cultures of Kenya and Congo.

This is a great story, and a very quick read. I did enjoy it. Overall, I’d give this book a 3.75 stars.

*SPOILERS*

The story itself was great, and I found little about it that I didn’t like. I felt like Tina is a strong character, and you can see that in the way she cares for her sister; like when she went to such depths to save Kiki from Omoko killing her. However, I thought the characters needed a little more description when being introduced. This may just have been me not catching on, but it took me until around 300 pages to figure out that Mr. Greyhill was a white man from the United States. I thought he was born and raised in Africa, and could not figure out why someone would call Michael a mulatto.

Another aspect of this book that I found lacking was the suspense. I felt as if the author was trying to bring suspense into the book, but I only found myself holding my breath when Christina was breaking into Mr. G’s office. There was some suspense when Boyboy couldn’t get hold of Mr. G, but I had faith that he would have a plan.