compelling novel for young people

Cassel Sharpe lives in a world in which there has always been magic and so-called curse workers - people with magical abilities - were. With a single touch those curse improvement can affect another person in many different ways. But exactly this magic is prohibited for many years, so that all those who use their skills anyway, are mostly involved in criminal machinations.

Also Cassel was born in a family of machine operators into curse, but unlike his brothers, he is supposed to be the only member of his family not a curse improvement. Nevertheless, his life is anything but normal, because his grandfather and his brothers work for Zacharovs, one of the six biggest gangster clans in the United States. But that is far from the most unusual: Three years ago, Cassel has his best friend Lila, the daughter of the head of Zacharov family, killed and he has no idea why he did that. Also on the exact circumstances of the offense, he can not remember.

Since then, he tries to escape his memories and his family, because if Zacharov ever find out where his only daughter suddenly disappeared and who is responsible for them, Cassel is as good as dead. But be cumbersome built, inconspicuous life in the boarding school comes to an end when he one night can be found on the roof of the school again, without knowing how he got there. Then he has to leave first and to return to his family, which has its own plans for Cassel the Internat ...

Entry into White Cat not exactly easy. You have to be a reader only once in the world, lives in Cassel, arrive and understand what is going on with the machine operators curse on himself. The first quarter of the book therefore becomes a bit in the length and you do not know so well. whereupon the whole thing now is to run out. But one has only once made this somewhat lengthy part behind him, it goes steeply uphill and the action is much more interesting and captivating.

Equally interesting is also the protagonist Cassel itself, which represents quite the opposite of a typical male protagonist. He is not a perfect fairy tale prince, in every girl immediately fell in love while reading. He lies, cheats and has no idea of ​​love or friendship. For him everything is always a business and to any complacency must be followed by a return. Nevertheless, Cassel is not entirely unsympathetic. You can give him his behavior not really blame, because he knows it because his family - his mother sits for example because of a marriage fraud in prison - not help.
Although Cassel tells his story from the first-person perspective, it drops an initially very difficult to him to build a bond, so you can not really sympathize with him. In the course of action to this change, however, luckily! Then you can also better enable Cassel into it and understand it.

The secondary characters, such as Cassels brothers Barron and Philip or his grandfather, are also interesting. Here you can learn about it only very little, but also it is partly that Cassel itself virtually nothing about his relatives actually knows what he needs to learn painful as the story progresses.

In between are small Cassel flashbacks to past events, such as also the murder of Lila, but partly not properly related to the presence in harmony, which he eventually suspects that his memories have been tampered with. He just does not know by whom, because he thinks he knows no memory improvement, although this is even quite staying near him.

From then on Cassel discovered a terrible secret after another and the reader is always surprised. Nothing seems to be more so as it was or as it has in Cassel memory and his life is placed upside down. Now Cassel will of course finally find out the truth, about himself, about his family and about what really happened three years ago.

Toward the end, then comes really voltage on and you really want to know how the story goes, because here everything will be different from what you had expected. One is at the end even disappointed that it's over, what one would have guaranteed not intended during the first hundred pages.
While the book is up to the penultimate page nor self-contained, the reader expected to last row still a pretty nasty Cliffhanger, the right takes along, leaving the second part crave quickly induce a.

The writing style of Holly Black can be read fluently and you realize that it has worked out its world of curse workers in great detail, although it differs from the known to us not so very different. Especially, of course, is also the connection with the Mafia or organized crime, which has specialized above all on the (illegal) curse magic.
Delicately strung should not be a reader of this book, because violence and death are in Cassels Family on the agenda and are therefore not only mentioned in passing.

White Cat is a book in which one at first somewhat difficult into place, but the enormous increases about after the first quarter and blossomed into a captivating novel for young people, who do not will not soon let go a again. To those who hold out this first section and overcomes expect an interesting and unique story that you have not read it yet so with security.

Holly Black shines with new ideas and manage to surprise the reader again and again. This first part is really hungry for more, so you will not miss the continuation escape.