Book Review - White Cat (Curse Workers, #1) by Holly Black

Synopsis:  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.

First Line:  "I wake up barefoot, standing on cold slate tiles."

Random Quote:  "That night in my old room with the ratty Magritte posters taped to the ceiling and the bookshelves stuffed with robots and Hardy Boys novels, I dream of being lost in a rainstorm.  Even though it's a dream, the rain feels cold against my skin and I can barely see with the water in my eyes."

Review:  I haven't read anything by Holly Black before and now I'm wondering how I missed her because this book is pretty cool.  For one thing, it combines crime families and prep school.  For another, it's a young adult book with a paranormal twist, but it doesn't have vampires or angels or werewolves or some other predator rewritten to sparkle at us (hell, that alone recommends it).  Instead Black has begun building a world where a substantial portion of the planet are curse workers - they can change something about you just by touching you with their bare hands.

Westover School - Image by AdmissionsQuest via Flickr

Cassel, our hero, is your basic teenage boy (I like that, too) - a non-worker in a family of workers with ties to the Russian mob.  His parents were grifters.  His brother is muscle.  His grandfather was a death worker who has half his fingers blown off from curse blowback.  Cassel doesn't really know who or what he is, he just knows that he killed his best friend and nothing's been the same since.  Things get really weird when he wakes up on the roof of his dorm where he's been chasing a white cat in his dreams.  Or has he?

Thanks to the publisher for the advance copy of this book.  I'll be interested to read the next one in what looks to be a promising series.

Reading Challenges:  ARC Reading Challenge, Speculative Fiction Reading Challenge, 2010 100+ Reading Challenge