White Cat (Curse Workers, #1) 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 criminals. Many become mobsters and con artists. But not Cassel. He hasn't got magic, 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.

Cassel has carefully built up a facade of normalcy, blending into the crowd. But his facade starts to crumble when he finds himself 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. As Cassel begins to suspect he's part of a huge con game, he must unravel his past and his memories. To find out the truth, Cassel will have to out-con the conmen.

• Genre: Paranormal, Urban Fantasy, Magic, Mystery, Supernatural
• Creatures: Super Powers humans
• Age: young adult
• Source: owned ebook 
• Read from November 22 to 28, 2012

FINAL RATING: ★★/★★★★★

“The thing is that it’s really hard to stop discrimination when something’s illegal,” the girl says. “I mean, everybody thinks of workers as being criminals. Like, people use the word ‘worker’ to mean
criminals. And, well, if we work a work, even once, we are criminals. So most of us are, because we had to figure it out somehow and that was usually by making something happen.”
“And there are lots of workers who never do anything bad. They go to weddings and hospitals and give people good luck. Or there’s people who work at shelters and they give people hope and make them feel confident and positive. And that word—‘cursing.’ Like all we can do is bad magic. I mean, why would you even want to do the bad stuff? The blowback’s awful. Like, if all a luck worker ever does is make people have good luck, then all he has is good luck too. It doesn’t have to be bad.”
“Magic,” the girl says. “It’s just all magic.”

I don't get whats up with the hype about this book? It definitely sounded promising but...there are lot of buts around. This is a story about a guy[Cassel] who killed his best friend [Lila], and the white cat who is stalking him. Sounds weird but ok......(right?)?

Anyways, the paragraph above explained the status of so called "workers", and i was wondering why the author didn't put it in the beginning in the first place. It just made the story pointlessly confusing at times. Not to mention that lack of fast revealings got the story quite slow, and add to it loooooooong chapters and there you have it. I thought about dropping it in the middle, but i decided to stick till the end (because i can't just drop it before i read it all, not my style xD). So, the last 1/4 was extremely entertaining - actually really awesome >:D, while 3/4 of the book were confusing and quite boring. Which is why i am gave this 2 stars.

Not to mention, first 3/4 of the book were absolutely predictable . I could already connect that:
1. Cat was Lila ,
2. Cassel was a worker with transformation powers (which is the ultimate awesome power. And that he didn't kill Lila, but turned her into cat. ,
3. the brothers were actually hiding the fact that Cassel was actually one of them. .

I didn't predict though that the brothers Philip and Barron (MAJOR SPOILER) used Cassel to kill people, then erased his memory and that they were doing it from the accident with Lila .

CHARACTERS:

Not to mention, i didn't like any of the characters.

♦ Cassel:

Cassel is totally boring guy. I usually love when books are told from first person view but only when it is the guy who is the narrator, but Cassel, Cassel just irritated the hell out of me. I don't think i succeeded in having sympathy for him at all. He is the type of the teenage girls in whose story everybody is keeping secrets and she doesn't know anything about it. Oh, and everyone here are keeping secrets from Cassel, under the "you are not worker so we can't tell you anything".
So.......he is the non-worker in worker family. Check. He doesn't have powers. Check. Boring. Check. Irritating. Check. Not to mention: average. Check.

♦ The white cat:

i can't really say anything about it, except it is an object of horrors. Hahahhaha.

♦ Lila:

Meet Lila:

Ironically, i was watching anime "K", where there is a girl called Neko, which has strikingly same appearance as Lila from the flashbacks (except for the length of her hair). Cute.
And that is all i am going to say about her. Except, i don't like her so much.

♦ Everyone else:

All of them were annoying me. Except Cassel's mother. She didn't have time to annoy because the whole book she was in Jail. Barron and Philip - i wanted to slaughter them. But as they say, everything for the family.

OVERALL:

Characters were very much annoying, and the plot was cofusing and boring at times, but it does have strong ending. Therefore, only the ending was enough for me to not drop this series. I just hope that the second book will be better than White Cat. I really hope so.

MY REVIEW ON GOODREADS