Hell to Pay
by Lora Beth Johnson
Pub Date Jul 28 2026
Penguin Young Readers Group | G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers
Sci Fi & Fantasy | Teens & YA
DESCRIPTION/SYNOPSIS:
Oceans Eight meets Six of Crows in this YA fantasy heist novel about a teenage con artist and her ragtag crew teaming up for their toughest job yet: stealing a soul from the Afterlife.
Elle Fields comes from a long line of thieves who specialize in breaking into the Afterlife to steal secrets—and magic—from the dead. But after her parents’ disappearance and her brother’s death, Elle is left adrift, without even her crew to rely on.
Until a mysterious stranger offers her a job she can’t refuse: stealing a soul from the Afterlife. If Elle can get it done, it could be the key to restoring the life she lost.
The only problem is getting her crew back together. Oh, and the fact that the job’s impossible—but Elle is confident that she’ll be able to work it all out.
After all, how hard could it be to raise the dead?
REVIEW:
While I’m not usually a big fan of the “heist” genre in general in any form—books, TV, movies—I did love Money Heist on Netflix and I want to read Six of Crows (which is on my Kindle’s virtual TBR pile), Hell to Pay is a fun and engaging cross-genre mix of heist, horror and fantasy, with a snarky heroine and an interesting crew. In this world, trips to the underworld are possible, even though gangs, endowed with magic from repeated such trips, rule above and below, and trace their lineages to living gods rooted in our so-called myths. On an apparently fruitless and solo quest to bring her brother back from death and the underworld due to her guilt over his death, Elle finds a client whose interests overlap with her own and give her the opportunity to have the client (inadvertently) fund her own supernatural reclamation mission.
Elle manages to reassemble her disbanded crew to accomplish both goals, but first they must steal a frustratingly magical book (er, grimoire) rumored to contain the spell needed to resurrect the dead, then invade Tartarus to free the client’s sister’s soul as a sort of proof of concept that they can bring back her brother, the former leader of the crew. Elle and her crew have a fun esprit de corps, filled with enough humor (and a dollop of angst) to go along with the dark subject matter (death and eternal torment) to keep things moving along for the inevitable twists to catch you off-guard.
The last book I reviewed ended in a clear cliffhanger. I almost expected a similar situation with Hell to Pay, but rest assured the author definitively ends this story, while leaving the door open to turn this into an ongoing series. If she does, I’ll be sure to check out the further adventures of Elle and her crew.
Note: I received an eGalley of Hell to Pay from the publisher via NetGalley in consideration of an unbiased review.
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