White Catby Holly Black
Published: 2010
Genre: Paranormal, YA
Hardback: 320 pages
Rating: 5
Description from the amazon:
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.
The Curse Workers series
White Cat
Red Glove - April 2011
Black Heart - tba
Zombie sighting:
I'm not sure that the picture of the wide-eyed zombie girl biting out the brains of senior douchebag James Page is part of Sam's homewok, but if it is, his physics teacher is awesome.
- page 22, chapter 2
My two-bits:
In-a-word(s): heebeegeebies
This was one of those unputdownable reads for me. It kept me interested from start to finish.
I found it interesting to learn about working a con and being conned especially from a likable character that is Cassel.
This book works well as a stand-alone read. But I was taken with the characters and world that I am most definitely picking up book 2, Red Glove in April!
PeekAbook:
* book courtesy of contest at The Ravenous Reader
