It took me a hot minute to complete this book (thanks, four-month old whom I love so much) but I'm glad I plowed through it. 
 For reference, I did not read the Grisha trilogy before I read this. I don't think it impacted how I felt about the book, so I don't think it's necessary to read them first. Other people may have differing opinions on that. 
 The story is very Ocean's 11-ish, but obviously set in a YA universe....with teenagers. You definitely forget they are teenagers as the story goes on, just because of what they are setting out to do. It's like you thought you knew what was happening, but then something completely different happened. It kept you on your toes. 
 The story is told by various viewpoints, which definitely worked in this case (sometimes that irritates me to no end). We got to see what each character was thinking, so that was nice. Some of the verbiage was hard to get through at first, but that didn't take away from the book experience at all. I really enjoyed the characters, especially Kaz, Inej, and Nina. I definitely want to read Crooked Kingdom in the near future.