Review: White Cat by Holly Black

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.

The Cureworkers |  Holly Black's Website

My Take:

While I was reading I had made tone of guesses but never guessed the ending, Holly was able to capture me with the first sentence and of course with a push and a shove and so many other signs, I was able to finish this baby on my way home from Vegas. Cassel has a hard life because he is in the shadow of his brothers who are workers. The story so far is brilliant because it captures not only the audience with the words illegal but it grabs the reader (aka me) to want to continue, yes it took awhile for it to be in my hands but I finished.

Knowing from the start what he did prior to the story's beginning its actually amazing how bluntly he is able to anyone what he did to his best friend even. As time went on and with each page I turned I knew something was up and of course the title is the biggest hint of all, half way through I thought one thing would happen to Cassel but it never did just something worse. 

I hope you get a copy of this one because it was a pleasure reading it and so much fun guessing who and what was happening in the story. Contemplating either reading the second one now or after I get it on Tuesday. I'll leave that up to you guys.

5/5 Stars 

Orange County Children's Book Festival

Let me start by saying this event was awesome because the authors who were at the event, their genre differs from the rest and I was able to see different authors and I was able to listen to different stories and I was intrigued. Of course with every event there is the journey there and this time we didn't get lost I attended with some friends andthe drive was easy no getting lost adventure this time. The moment we got there I was pumped and anxious with meeting some of today's hottest authors. As the time went on we were able to go from booth to booth and find the one booth we wanted to get to and it was The Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore because we wanted to grab the books of the authors that were there so we were able to grab and learned all of the authors that were there. After buying my copy of Personal Demons (love the author) by Lisa Desrochers. We ran into Becca Fitzpatrick the wonderful author who wrote hush, hush who I met back when the book came out. We stayed around the booth and saw who was talking one author every 15 minutes speaking of course of the books they wrote.

One of the authors everyone seemed the

most excited for was Lauren Kate. She was a hit and a wonderful person I am forever grateful to have met her today. Even though I haven't read Fallen or the newest one to the series Torment I have heard so many great things I bought Fallen there also I'm happy. She is really nice and the series seems promising stay tuned for my review coming soon.

Through out the day we stood mainly in the YA section of the festival getting excited as every 15 minutes new authors would go up there. Some including Amber Benson who is an actor turned writer she talked about Among the Ghost. Others included Mary Hanlon Stone the author of invisiblegirl. It seems really interesting and I'm looking forward to reading it soon. Also Barbara A. Mahler who wrote The hole in the sky which has won so many awards, this one seems interesting also and there was a plus she gave us butterfly tattoos (score!!!)

The last author we were looking forward to was Lisa and so at 2:15 she came on stage and talked about the book and how she wrote for her daughter and how writing that one time got her to stick with writing and we are all so grateful for her writing.

This is what I did today meet with a bunch of authors got told many times to buy there books and that i should hurry up and read them and of course the never ending book pile is still well never ending until next time.

-silent t aka kaitlyn