Book Review: White Cat

White Cat
Curse Workers #1
Author: Holly Black
Pages: 310 pgs
Reading Level: YA
Published: May 4th 2010
Review Source: Purchased (Signed)

Summary: (from goodreads) 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.

Holly Black has created a gripping tale of mobsters and dark magic where a single touch can bring love — or death — and your dreams might be more real than your memories.

I finally picked up White Cat to read even though I've had it since I went to Holly's book signing. I decided to wait on reading it once I knew I would be able to get a ARC of Red Glove and then read back to back. I gave this book 3 trees because it took 3/4 of the book for me to really get into the story. I never really connected with the main character Cassel. I give big props to Holly for creating such a unique storyline. I think sometimes the first books in a series are just so you can wet your feet and then jump into the next installment. Like I said the whole setting of how you have people that are called Curse Workers is very interesting. 

The Curse workers wear gloves so they can't physically touch one another and curse who they are touching. You have different types of curse workers such as Luck, Death and Memory. These are just a few of them. They try to live under the radar, so that people wont accuse them of causing problems. You have those that use their magic for good and of course those that use it for really bad things. The book is written in the Male POV and that's where I didnt connect. Definitely a fast-paced read and nothing to hard to understand. So because I enjoyed the world that Holly created but was not connected with the main character, I went with a middle grading. So that's how I picked 3 trees. I will say this I'm now reading Red Glove the second installment in the series by Holly. Red Glove is grabbing me better than White Cat and even Cassel and me started connecting. So Yes I would recommend reading this book.