White Cat by Holly Black
Pages: 320
Published Date: May 4, 2010
Book 1 in the Curse Workers series
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.
So just from the summary, I'm sure you can tell this book is not your normal wizard book. It focuses more on how Curse Workers use their gift to get ahead in life. This book hits the ground running with an opening scene that hooked me after the first few sentences.
Since this is the first book in the series, there is a lot of backstory and world building, but I thought the appropriate amount of time was devoted to both the story at hand and to those elements.
I will warn you though, Cassel is definitely an anti-hero. He's a bad guy, but he does have some redeemable qualities. He goes through an awful lot in the first book. I can't wait to see how it shapes him for the rest of the series.
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