White Cat by Holly Black
Release Date: May 4, 2010
Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry
Pages: 310
Source: Purchased Copy
Rating:  
Buy It: Amazon | Book Depository

Cassel comes from a family of curse workers — people who have the power to change your emotions, your memories, your luck, by the slightest touch of their hands. And since curse work is illegal, they’re all mobsters, or con artists. Except for Cassel. He hasn’t got the magic touch, so he’s an outsider, the straight kid in a crooked family. You just have to ignore one small detail — he killed his best friend, Lila, three years ago.

Ever since, Cassel has carefully built up a façade of normalcy, blending into the crowd. But his façade starts crumbling when he starts sleepwalking, propelled into the night by terrifying dreams about a white cat that wants to tell him something. He’s noticing other disturbing things, too, including the strange behavior of his two brothers. They are keeping secrets from him, caught up in a mysterious plot. As Cassel begins to suspect he’s part of a huge con game, he also wonders what really happened to Lila. Could she still be alive? To find that out, Cassel will have to out-con the conmen. – Goodreads

Review:
White Cat is the first Holly Black book I’ve read and I must say that I’m impressed! During a good portion in the beginning, I wasn’t too sure of how much I would enjoy White Cat. It felt like things were happening but the pieces of information weren’t coming together in a way that made sense. It soon became clear, though, that the main character, Cassel Sharpe, was equally confused, so I was able to figure things out as he did — which is a good thing, I think. It’s very frustrating when I, as the reader, am ahead of the main character and can easily see what they’re missing or what direction the story is going; there’s no point in reading a book like that, but White Cat managed to keep me on my toes.

I completely fell in love with the idea of curse working. We’ve seen the ‘magic’ featured before, but it was fascinating to see what individual had what ability, as well as the extent of their responsibility over it. There were a few individuals with hidden talents, too, so those reveals were great. Furthermore, I really enjoyed how contained curse working felt here. Yes, curse working is illegal, and there were a few characters causing trouble for their own benefit, but the storyline here felt very personal with a relatively small cast of characters I grew to be familiar with. None of that larger than life, saving/destroying the world type stuff. At least not yet, anyway.

White Cat is the type of book that doesn’t slow down, but instead keeps building from one con to the next. That last con? There is so much tension that you might just break out into a sweat. Cassel is the only non-curseworker in his family and it was quite exhilarating to have him keep pace with those who had an obvious advantage. Unfortunately, the final reveal at the end of the book fell flat for me due to my own stupidity of reading the summary for the sequel, Red Glove, while still in the middle of reading this one. Oy, major facepalm, I know. Still, I think it’s an interesting shift in the story and I know it’s going to torment Cassel to an extreme degree… who doesn’t love a good internal conflict? I can’t wait to read it!

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