Author: Holly Black
Series:
Curse Workers #1
Published:
February 18, 2011
Publisher:
Margaret K. McElderry Books
310
pages (Paperback)
Summary:
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 criminals. Many become mobsters and
con artists. But not Cassel. He hasn't got magic, 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.
Cassel has carefully built up a facade of normalcy, blending into the crowd. But his facade starts to crumble when he finds himself 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. As Cassel begins to suspect he's part of a huge con game, he must unravel his past and his memories. To find out the truth, Cassel will have to out-con the conmen.
Cassel has carefully built up a facade of normalcy, blending into the crowd. But his facade starts to crumble when he finds himself 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. As Cassel begins to suspect he's part of a huge con game, he must unravel his past and his memories. To find out the truth, Cassel will have to out-con the conmen.
Review:
Lately,
all I’ve been reading are so-so books and it quite frustrates me that this book
will be added on that ever growing list. Knowing that this book was recommended
to me by one of my favorite authors, it saddens me that I didn’t end up loving
it like she does.
The
book is set in a world where curse workers exists and is in the POV of Cassel—the
protagonist in the story. It was my first time reading a book where the POV is
from a guy. So it was really nice to have a time out from all those books which
if not from a damsel-in-distress then
from a whiny and irksome teenagers’ POV.
Judging
from the summary of this book, I expected a lot of action and fighting but the
only fighting (I wouldn’t really call it a fight) I encountered within this
book was from the near end part of the book. White Cat didn’t invoke a lot of
emotions from me, scratch that, it didn’t really arouse any emotions from me.
Nothing, zero, zilch. My face was just like this (-_____-) the whole time.
I
had to admit that it took my brain quite a while to process all the information
in the book. I also didn’t have an instant connection to the characters. White
Cat started off as this mysterious, intriguing and mind boggling book which
later end up as a monotonous book for me. The plot of the book was good and it has
a lot of potentials turning into an awesome book but it seems to me that the
author didn’t use those potentials sensibly.
Though
I didn’t like this book, I also didn’t hate it. It was okay. There’s nothing
special from it aside from the POV coming from a guy. But there’s always room
for improvement and since this is only the first book in a series, I’ll give
this book the benefit of the doubt. Nonetheless, I still recommend this book to
you guys, who knows, you might end up loving it.
