Read with Fern

Spoilers Beyond This Point

Characters:

• Dani: main character, has the magical ability to recreate art perfectly
• Sunflower: Dani’s border collie 
• Maria: Dani’s mom, currently incarcerated, has the magical ability of persuasion 
• Archer: a business associate of Maria’s, has the magical ability of teleportation
• William: billionaire, recently died, owned a huge collection of paintings
• Rose: William’s assistant
• Brad: William’s son, in charge of William’s estate
• Emma: Brad’s young daughter
• Elliott: Dani’s childhood sweetheart, has the magical ability to find things
• Rabbit: The other adult in the group, has the magical ability to control technology
• Mia: Rabbit’s daughter and Dani’s childhood best friend, does not have a magical ability
• Liz: Mia’s girlfriend, an aerialist
• Maeve: Dani & Maria’s ancestor, also had a magical art talent

Summary (with Spoilers)

After 10 years of actively avoiding the magic community, Dani is confronted by a man named Archer. He introduces himself as a former business associate of her mother’s, and Dani remembers her mom talking about him. His job is stealing a specific painting, which is why it has to be Dani. And he’s offering up the one thing she could never turn down, a chance to move back to her childhood home. Dani immediately takes him up on his offer, and begins the journey back home. 

Archer meets her there and gives her the keys to the house. He then gives Dani more details, informing her that she has less than two weeks to get everything in order. The painting Archer wants is going to be sold as part of an estate sale. The owner was a billionaire with a massive art collection, and once he died, his son insisted on selling it. Archer got Dani a job as the head of security for the 10 days leading up to the sale, and the sale day itself. His only other stipulation is that his painting is stolen, not purchased, because he doesn’t want it traced back to him. With the job requirements, Dani knows immediately she’ll need the help of her old crew, and heads to their home base.

“Rabbit had to be the first visit on her list. She was the only one who knew as much as her mother about planning to grab a piece of art—and who could be an entrée to the other people Dani needed on her crew.”

The Frame-Up, Gwenda Bond

Despite not seeing the rest of her crew for a decade, Dani tells herself that all she needs to do is see them and plead her case. Unfortunately, Rabbit, essentially a surrogate parent for Dani, turns her down immediately. Dani is then forced to visit her mother in jail, and have Maria convince Rabbit to help with the job. While Dani is with Maria, Maria lets her know that the only reason Archer hired her is because Maria is unavailable. Maria then assures Dani that she’ll handle as much of the heavy lifting as possible, because she doesn’t trust Dani not to let Archer down.

“Dani deliberately walked over to her mother’s place and took it. Time to see how they would react to the fact she was in fucking charge, even if they were only here because Maria summoned them.”

The Frame-Up, Gwenda Bond

The next day, Rabbit, along with Mia and Elliott, have agreed to help Dani with the job. Dani gathers them at her home, where they’ve held countless other meetings. She takes the role of leader, and together they begin to plot out the various points in their heist. It’s agreed that Elliott will join Dani in her fake job as her fake assistant, so there’s more eyes on the environment. Rabbit will be in charge of all the technology and hacking, while Mia does all the background work. And so as the first week ticks by, Dani and Elliott spend every minute possible at the grand estate, collecting as much information as possible. This includes talking to Brad, Rose, and the 3 ex-wives, along with the actual security team.

“‘The entire thing, it’s like some sort of Rube Goldberg machine of magic. The paintings, all together, arranged just so, they were a power source for Hackworth.’”

The Frame-Up, Gwenda Bond

While Dani and Elliott start observing the massive art collection, Dani has a weird feeling. Instead of being displayed in a standard gallery setting, the paintings are almost haphazardly clumped together in different areas. Dani realizes that the paintings are arranged to create a power source. She assumes that William used the power source as a conduit for his magical talents, which Archer had not mentioned. She and Elliott also spend time with the painting that Archer needs them to steal. It’s the only painting without any sort of artist information included, and looks like it’s a portrait of Archer himself. But Dani is convinced the painting is from the late 1800s, which wouldn’t make sense.

“Beverly almost looked like she’d laugh off the question, but when she answered, it was in a whisper. ‘He was talking to that painting. The one that looks like your friend.’”

The Frame-Up, Gwenda Bond

During one of the main tours of the gallery, Brad brings along his father’s three ex-wives. One of them, Beverly, makes a point of talking about Archer’s painting. She got close to it, and immediately had a visceral reaction. She started screaming about the voices in her head, and crumbled to the floor. The other two ex-wives rush to her side, and they end up taking her to get checked out by a doctor. But Dani is concerned that the reaction was caused by the painting.

“‘Good lord, you’re turning into the Scooby-fucking-Doo gang on me. No, the motherfucking painting is not harboring a ghost.’ Rabbit practically towed Mia to the door.”

The Frame-Up, Gwenda Bond

While Rabbit doesn’t believe Dani’s theory when she presents it, Elliott backs her up. Confused and exhausted, Dani heads back to her home. While there, she has the urge to check some of her mother’s original hiding spots, and discovers an old diary. She starts reading it and realizes it’s from the late 1800s, the same timeframe as the painting. 

Dani immediately dives in and learns the diary was written by a young woman named Maeve. Maeve was in France, studying art. She details her life before school, including being raped by a man and forced to give birth to his daughter. After that, she is forced to paint a portrait of her rapist, and she uses her magical talent to bind him to the painting by incorporating her blood into the paint. Once she’s sure it works, she destroys the painting, again using her own blood, and the man immediately disappears.

Shortly after that, Maeve is sent to Paris. She is introduced to a man named … Archer. And he’s a horrible person, treating these young girls like property, and assaulting them. Maeve details how terrible he is, and that she’s worried for some of her friends’ safety. After an incident, Maeve is determined to stop Archer for good. She confronts him, and he confesses that he’s actually a demon. (This was the exact point where I gave up).

“She must have survived, though, right? Or Dani wouldn’t be here. Or was Dani part of the line of the little girl who she’d given birth to, who she’d had to leave behind when her parents shipped her off to Paris?”

The Frame-Up, Gwenda Bond

There’s enough evidence to conclude that Dani is a direct descendant of Maeve. And based on her mother’s dealings with Archer over the years, Dani is pretty sure that Maria is under Archer’s spell. So on top of trying to outsmart Archer and get everything set up to finally destroy him, Dani will also have to outsmart her mother. She knows from the diary that the duplicate painting she makes as part of the heist will also need to have blood magic tied to it, so she gets to work.

“‘I know what Archer is, and what he was to my father. I still don’t know exactly why he wanted only you for this job, but he promised me that Emma would be safe if I said yes. So I did what he asked. Made sure you got hired.’”

The Frame-Up, Gwenda Bond

As Dani gets to know her new “boss,” Brad, she has a lot of questions about him. It’s clear that his dad had a magical talent, but she’s not sure if Brad even knows about that. Over the course of the first few days, Dani and Brad get to know each other, and Brad reveals that he knows everything about his father. He explains to Dani that his father had power over Archer because he owned the painting that looked like him. William had tried to explain everything to Brad, but Brad was insistent that he didn’t want to know. Instead of abusing someone else’s power to become a billionaire, Brad wanted to focus on making the world a better place. It’s within all these personal reveals that Dani realizes Brad has feelings for her, and she can’t decide if she feels the same way.

“‘That is the way of such workings. I will make you bleed, and then I will be released from this cursed image. You think to destroy one such as I? I will not allow it. You could have had greatness, and now you will die like a common whore.’”

The Frame-Up, Gwenda Bond

One day as Elliott stops by the house to see Dani, his magical talent comes in handy. He discovers a second hiding place that Dani didn’t know about, and there were more diary pages inside. Dani is confused about why her mother hid them until she reads them. It details Maeve’s attempt  to do the same magic painting technique with Archer. She was far enough along before he realized what was happening that his soul was contained in the painting, but he wasn’t fully destroyed. For any other action to happen, Maeve’s blood would need to be used. And the blood can either release or destroy Archer. 

Since that night, Archer has been hunting Maeve’s bloodline, trying to convince each woman to release him. And he’d finally found a willing participant, Maria. But Dani’s actions at 17 had thwarted his plans, and now Maria and Archer were trying to use Dani to release him.

“The headline read, “Infamous Art Thief Escapes from Federal Hospital.” Holy fuck! She skimmed the brief two-paragraph story that confirmed her mother had broken out of the Federal Medical Center sometime in the last two hours.”

The Frame-Up, Gwenda Bond

The night of the heist, Maria escapes from jail. It’s clear that she and Archer aren’t confident in their persuasion tactics with Dani, and they have a back-up plan. So Dani has to balance being the fake head of security, the real head of the heist, and the only person who can stop Archer.

The heist itself gets a few short chapters, which show Elliott schmoozing with the ex-wives while Mia and her girlfriend Liz are on display as aeralists in the gallery. The three cause several sets of distractions so that Dani can replace the painting with a duplicate.

“‘What did you do?’ Maria asked as she bled on Dani. ‘What did you do now?’ Dani grinned fiercely. ‘Exactly what I meant to.’”

The Frame-Up, Gwenda Bond

What Dani kept from everyone is that both paintings were duplicates. She manages to confuse everyone, so that when Archer appears and snatches the painting from her, he thinks he has the original. Instead, Dani’s in control, and she quickly ruins the right painting, and Archer disappears immediately. Maria is furious, but has only a few moments before the police arrive to find her. Dani lets her leave, and turns back to her found family. 

Ready for my full opinion?

This book was fine. The most disappointing part was how flat the second half was compared to the first half. I really didn’t like how under-developed the romance aspect was. It was in that weird in-between where it was distracting from the plot and did nothing for the character development. Dani was written as a character with no roots or ties, and that didn’t change at any point in the story. Despite having these deep connections with Elliott, Rabbit, and Mia, there was no depth to their relationships beyond knowing how they work together. 

I think I could’ve overlooked more of those gaps if the whole half-dead demon issue didn’t exist. That popped up about halfway through, and I completely gave up on trying to like the book. The magic everyone seems to have is very neutral, where each character chooses to use it for good or evil. But then suddenly there’s also demons, but no one knew there were demons? Very odd, and wholly unexplained in the storyline. 

Truly, I would recommend this to anyone specifically looking for a magical art heist storyline. If that specific storyline isn’t what you’re looking for, I think there are better fantasy, magic, and heist books that would hold your attention.