Audiobook Review: White Cat

White Cat (Curse Workers, 1) by Holly Black read by Jesse Eisenberg, 2010. Time: 6 hours 41 minutes.  Published by Listening Library. Source: Free Download

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.

My first audiobook review. *am nervous*
Story:

While I wasn't to keen on the reader for White Cat I did highly enjoy reading about the world that Holly Black created in her Curse Workers book, so much so that I have bought myself the book to read sometime in the future.

The thing that fascinated me the most about the world in which the characters lived were their curses, I thought they were one of the most interesting abilities that I have read about in awhile and the fact that the worker would suffer some sort of consequence from using them was brilliant.

While I liked the world building and the setting for the story, I found it to be just a tad too easy to figure out the plot in White Cat. Let me put it this way, I pretty much sluethed out the bases of the plot forty or so minutes into the audiobook. Don't get me wrong I still enjoyed it, but would have liked to be made to work to figure things out.    

I'm holding off my thoughts on Cassel and the rest of the characters until I read the actual book, so I think I'll wrap up my first audio book review here. =)

Reader:

I feel bad saying this, but I think I probably would have enjoyed White Cat more if I had read the actual book rather than listening to the audio version.

My biggest problem with the audiobook version of White Cat was the narrator's portrayal of Cassel, and the inflections of his voice. He just made the Cassel's character come across as rather dense and like he was constantly suffering from boredom.

While I wasn't to hot on the voice casting of this audiobook, I think he did do a good job when Cassel's character seemed to be feeling either fear or pain. He also did a great job in portraying Cassel's stand-offishness. 

Before I give my final judgment on whether to continuing on with this series or not, I will be reading White Cat

Final Verdict: The world of White Cat is absolutely one of my favorite non fantasy book worlds. Such depth.    

White Cat audiobook earns 3 out of 5 pineapples.