Review: White Cat, by Holly Black

White Cat [Curse Workers #1]

by Holly Black

Format: Hardback / paperback / ebook

Nr of Pages: 32

Publisher: Gollancz 

Synopsis: 

Cassel comes from a family of curse workers--people who have the power to change your emotions, your memories, your luck, all by the slightest touch of their hands. Since curse work is illegal, they're all criminals. But not Cassel. He hasn't got the magic touch, so he's an outsider--the straight kid in a crooked family--as long as you ignore one small detail: He killed his best friend, Lila. Now he is sleepwalking, propelled into the night by terrifying dreams about a white cat. He also notices that his brothers are keeping secrets from him. As Cassel begins to suspect he's part of one huge con game, he must unravel his past and his memories. To find out the truth, Cassel will have to outcon the conmen...

Rating: 3,75 Stars

Review:

I had been meaning to read something by Holly Black for quite some time now. My sister Gabriella read the Spiderwick Chronicles when she was younger and couldn’t stop saying that they were her favourite books. But as always life gets in the way, other books that you really want to read get to your TBR pile and I ended up looking at Spiderwick Chronicles thinking “do I really *really*  want to start a five book saga?”.

When I first started reading White Cat I didn’t knew that it was part of a trilogy. I was wrongly convinced that like Doll Bones this was a stand alone novel so when I brought it home from the Charity Shop and sited down reading it all happy I really didn’t knew where I was getting myself into.

Cassel is cursed and he should be after all he is a killer, he killed his best friend in cold blood when he was just fourteen. Born in a family of magic workers, Cassel’s family manage to contain the killing and now Cassel is living more or less a normal life, this is until a white cat starts to hunt him.

The Curse Workers is an elegant constructed work in which mob and magic go side by side. I enjoyed all the little details that Holly Black weaved into her story, e.g. Australia has almost 1% of curse workers because that’s where they ship them, and how the mobs were created. This is also a book about cons and I have to admit that I have a soft spot for con books/movies (*Leverage theme plays in the back*), and Cassel learned how to con from one of the best, an emotion worker, his mother.

Although you know he is a murder I think it’s easy to like Cassel, he is seventeen when the story starts and he is in a very fancy school were he studies and acts as the bookie for the rich kids. We get to follow his routine until the mysterious white cat appears and our stories starts to unfold. Cassel’s story is also a story about family, making friends and trusting your instincts.

Holly Black writing is both modern and simples, and you catch yourself turning page after page. Also she can manage to make you scared if needed and invested in her characters. Recently Holly Black associated herself with Cassandra Clara to write Magisterum a new saga that will hit the shelves in about a month or so.

I have become a fan of Holly Black’s writing, and got myself a new YA author to stalk, also I am now waiting impatiently for the library to have the second volume of this saga Red Glove delivered to the nearest branch so I can keep reading Cassel’s adventure.