Review : White Cat

Title: White Cat
Author: Holly Black
Publisher: McElderberry books (Simon and Schuster)
Links: Goodreads | Amazon

Description 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.

My Review:

Fantastic!

I really liked Holly Black's books about the Fae (Tithe, Valiant, and Ironside), so I'm not sure why it took me so long to pick up White Cat. Maybe I was afraid that I wouldn't like this book as much since it wasn't about fairies? Well, I was wrong! I liked this book even more than her previous books!

The book starts off right in the middle of action- Cassel wakes up from sleepwalking to find himself on top of his school's roof, stuck. How did he get up there, and why did his dream lead him there? As the story unfolds we are told more about the curse workers and their history, Cassel's ties to them, and why he sleepwalks to his (almost) death. Black does a great job of only giving out little bits of information at a time, and keeps up just enough suspense, that makes the reader keep flipping through the pages. There was never a point where I was bored with the story! I wanted to know more about curse workers, more about his family, more about his dreams and the white cat he keeps seeing.

There were things in the story that I never saw coming. Sure, there were clues that I was satisfyingly able to figure out about little events in the book, but the main plot was still a mystery until it was revealed. The twists in White Cat were awesome!

The curse workers were so interesting! I loved the world that Holly Black created around them. What would it be like if there really were people who could change our feelings, luck, or memories? Black's answer is intriguing.

White Cat is a deliciously dark and mysterious story. I can't wait to dig into Red Glove, the next book in this series!