White Cat, by Holly Black, is part mystery, part dark urban fantasy, part twisted romance, and part mob story. I hope you like your fiction dark and bruised, because this story doesn't pull any punches. It takes place in a world very much like our own, except everyone has to wear gloves to protect themselves from curses. And our dubious "hero," Cassel Sharpe, knows a little more about working curses than your average Joe.
Cassel wakes up on the roof of his fancy high school dorm and nearly falls to his death. He's been sleepwalking again, and now the school is threatening to expel him as too much of a liability. Was he really sleepwalking, or was he cursed? He dreamed of following a white cat....
Cassel is the only nonworker in a family of curse workers. Since curse working was outlawed in the 1920s, most curse workers are employed by the mob. At first, Cassel thinks he's only got to con his school into letting him back in. Then he begins to think that the dream about the white cat might be related to the girl he loved when he was fourteen; the girl he killed. At least, that's what his two brothers told him after they dumped the body. Cassel doesn't remember why he killed her, only that he was standing over her bloody body. Now Cassel thinks his brothers are hiding something from him, something important. To learn the horrible truth, he'll have to find the white cat from his dream. But the truth is a dangerous thing when the mob is involved, and Cassel finds himself caught between murder and treachery in the underbelly of curse worker society.
If you like
White Cat, the curse workers series continues with
Red Glove and
Black Heart.
Happy reading.
~gothbrarian
