White Cat (The Curse Workers #1), by Holly Black

White Cat (The Curse Workers #1), by Holly Black on Goodreads

Release Date: 2010
Age Group: Young Adult

Pages: 310

Overall: 5 Monkeys
Source: Won
Interest: Series

Other Titles in the Series: Red Glove (The Curse Workers #2), Black Heart (The Curse Workers, #3)

Summary 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 Opinion:

What an amazing book! I have nothing but great words for this book, it's awesome!

From the beginning we're trapped into this game of trust and deception, of cons and murders, of love and brotherhood. I loved the world Black has created and can't wait to read more about it!

The story is all about Cassel (pronounced like "castle", according to the author) and how he is a non-worker in a family of workers. To be a worker means to have a special ability: emotion workers can change your feelings just by touching you, memory workers change or block your memories, etc., etc. But transformation workers are the rarest workers in the world. Basically just one is born within a decade, or a generation even.

Workers work their magic by touching other, hence the use of gloves. To be seen without gloves is very serious thing, and "bare hands can be as dangerous as knives".

Cassel has killed his friend Lila, and now his guilt is coming back. And so is his mother, locked up in prison, and about to be set free. Cassel is asked to leave school after an incident involving the school's roof, and has to go home.

To prepare for his mother's arrival, his grandfather gets him to work on cleaning up their old house. There, he sees cats lurking around. And a white cat he thinks he's seen before.

From that point on the story gets more amazing and fast paced. We learn the truth about Cassel and the cat, and there's a scene towards the end that is just plain awesome.

The ending made me groan in frustration! How could Cassel's mother do that to her son? Ugh! Poor Cassel!

I really have nothing more to say, except that I loved this book and can't wait for Red Glove.

Visit Holly Black's website.