White Cat (The Curse Workers #1)

Title: White Cat (The Curse Workers #1)
Author: Holly Black
Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry Books
Date: May 4th, 2010
Rating: 3 Stars

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.-GoodReads

The best thing about this book by far was the world that Holly Black built. It was so detailed and it felt real. I love the fact that everything came with a price, especially the magic they worked. If a worker took away a memory, memories were taken from them in the blow back. If a death worker killed something or someone a small part of them died also in the blow back. It took me a couple of chapters to get used to the world but once I did it was great.

The characters were interesting enough. I couldn't help but feel sorry for Cassel for the way his family was. Everyone stabbed each other in the back and the ending showed just how someones best intentions could go wrongly. Cassel himself was the type of person who played a character. He was afraid of who he was so when he was at school he pretended to be a person who blended in with the crowd. By the end of the story I think he was finally able to be himself with his friends.

The writing style was great and I enjoyed the story, but for me it wasn't the greatest. I will probably read the sequel and if the summery interests you I suggest that you read it. It was a good book but for me personally it just didn't have a spark.