Book Review: White Cat

Title: White Cat
Author: Holly Black


I bought this book.


Description: 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 con men.


My Review: Cassel Sharpe is a teenager living on the edge - literally. Holly Black starts off White Cat with her main character waking up on the roof of his dorm room, without having any memory of how he got there.  All he remembers about his sleepwalking adventure is a white cat.  This event sets off a series of events that lead up to a startling revelation about the true face of Cassel's family.

Black mixes the mobster with the magical to create a unique world of con men and grifters, curse work and touch magic, that grabs readers and pulls them into Cassel's story.  Despite being a conman, bookie and self-proclaimed murderer, Cassel is a character that readers can sympathize with.  After all, his grandfather and brothers have done worse things.

My Rating: 4 stars

Description and picture courtesy of Goodreads.