Freshly twenty-one and sporting a daring new bob, Greta Gatsby—younger sister to the infamous Jay—is finally free of her dull finishing school, and looking forward to an idyllic summer at the Gatsby Mansion, the jewel of West Egg. From its breathtaking views to its eccentric denizens, Greta is eager to inhale it all--even to the predictable disapproval of Mrs Dantry, Jay’s exacting housekeeper. Indeed, nothing could disrupt the blissful time Greta has planned… except finding out that Jay’s cadre of dubious friends—Daisy and Tom Buchanan, along with Nick Carraway and Jordan Baker—will be summering there, too.
A thoroughly enjoyable mystery story with all the tropes and pleasures of a golden age detective story ... Well-written and pacy, inflected by the original characters and setting but otherwise unconstrained by them.
Delightful ... Anderson-Wheeler writes in a voice that is fun to read, even as she stays true to the character traits Fitzgerald created a century ago ... Fitzgerald scholars may find it all frivolous — nothing but fan fiction that effectively negates the plot of the original — but readers who either don’t care about that or who just want to spend more time with these characters will be rewarded.
Anderson-Wheeler isn’t the stylist that Fitzgerald was (not many are) but she understands his characters. That understanding informs Gambit, which smartly recognizes that star-crossed lovers Jay and Daisy were never meant to be, even with Tom conveniently out of the picture ... If The Great Gatsby is going to turn into a The Avengers-style bit of intellectual property, with spinoffs of spinoffs of spinoffs — and, clearly, it already is — then The Gatsby Gambit is an example of how well that could go ... Anderson-Wheeler obviously loves and has been thoughtful about the source material, and she has written a novel that respects its elder while, like a boat against the current, she takes its characters in a completely new direction.
