Bluff: A Novel

What a wild ride! I picked this up on the recommendation of Julia Whelan, who narrated the audiobook and mentioned when we chatted for a What Should I Read Next episode that Kardos's books, in her opinion, didn't get the recognition they deserved. At first this book reminded me very much of Maria Konnokova's The Biggest Bluff, about learning to play poker. In it, a twenty-something magician gets into financial trouble and decides to learn to cheat at cards to raise the extra cash she needs. She finds a mentor who will teach her how to manipulate the deck and dupe her fellow players into giving her all their money, and her once-modest quest to raise small sum evolves into a bigger con. When this story took an abrupt and grisly turn I wasn't expecting, I HATED it and wished I'd never begun it. (I could give you a very specific comp title but I fear it would reveal too much!) I kept reading and the reveal made me forgive everything. Dark, twisty, and utterly absorbing.