White Cat by Holly Black

[katekintailbc]

White Cat
by Holly Black
(Audio)

Hmmm. I read this book because the main character, Cassel, was #1 in this list of male protags and also because I've loved other Holly Black books and have met her several times in person; she is awesome. The problem is, I liked Cassel a lot, but I didn't feel he was as amazingly strong a character as the top ten list led me to believe. I feel the fault lies in the audio performance. The audiobook was read by Jesse Eisenberg. I love the guy and he did a fantastic job reading. But it made me think of Cassel as some adorable nerd (totally my type, don't get me wrong) and not a suave stud with a lot of guts.

Apart from this problem, I liked the story a lot. Cassell is part of a family of workers, people who have special powers of one sort or another. But he's not magical at all. OR SO HE THINKS! He finds out that not only has he been lied to his whole life, but his emotions and memory have been toyed with to make sure he doesn't realize the truth. But, no worries, he figures out how to use his talents and how to stick it to certain people in the process... not to mention helping the innocent.

The characters--the cat, his friends, his family, etc. were believable. The world was interesting enough to keep me reading.

The story was a whole lot shorter than I thought it should be. It seemed like just as it was starting to get going, it was over and resolved (though with an open ending; I look forward to the next book). I'm sure it would have seemed longer if I'd read it in hard copy... but it just seemed too short to me. Guess we'll see how I feel after I read the second book.