Red Herring (WARNING: RIFE WITH SPOILERS)

Curses and cons. Magic and the mob. In Cassel Sharpe's world, they go together. Cassel always thought he was an ordinary guy, until he realized his memories were being manipulated by his brothers. Now he knows the truth—he’s the most powerful curse worker around. A touch of his hand can transform anything—or anyone—into something else.

That was how Lila, the girl he loved, became a white cat. Cassel was tricked into thinking he killed her, when actually he tried to save her. Now that she's human again, he should be overjoyed. Trouble is, Lila's been cursed to love him, a little gift from his emotion worker mom. And if Lila's love is as phony as Cassel's made-up memories, then he can't believe anything she says or does.

When Cassel's oldest brother is murdered, the Feds recruit Cassel to help make sense of the only clue—crime-scene images of a woman in red gloves. But the mob is after Cassel too—they know how valuable he could be to them. Cassel is going to have to stay one step ahead of both sides just to survive. But where can he turn when he can't trust anyone—least of all, himself?

Love is a curse and the con is the only answer in a game too dangerous to lose.**

And so here we are again. I actually finished this book weeks ago but with all the crazy busyness of finals and papers I haven't had the chance to actually sit down and think about it.

Red Glove starts off with Cassel and his mother living large in Atlantic City. Cassel is being bogged down by his brother who is insistent on keeping the brotherhood Cassel so carefully spun alive and by Lila's father who is desperate to recruit Cassel and his transformation powers on board. This is happening while Cassel has returned to school only to meet curse-ridden, love-obsessed Lila who is attending the prep place as well and as the feds breathe down his neck into betraying his family. Then he finds out his brother's been murdered. I bet your head is spinning as fast as mine.

In all honesty though, I never quite understood Cassel's dilemma over Lila. I mean sure, his mom basically rearranged her personality so he would love her but on the other hand, Lila knew that she was under the influence of the curse and she knew that he loved her so what was all the Twilight-level angsting for? If he had just what, avoided her or even just went along for the sake of it until she snapped out of it, what would have been the big deal? Do guys really think things like this through to that point? I dunno, it just irked me every time Cassel whined over how Lila was under a curse and then when she's free of it and pissed at him, he's confused. Um, what? Considering her previously awesome behavior, of course she'd be pissed. OK, maybe it's just a misunderstanding but that could be easily fixed. And speaking about Lila's original personality, sigh; I really do miss it, even in cat form.

Moving on, the whole FBI thing was a little bit too drawn out as well for me. But then it did herald some new threads on the dead Phillip which I do hope cross over to the next novel, or otherwise be just a useless add to an otherwise better plot. The whole mystery on who-killed-Phillip-Sharpe was good. Predictable but good. As I had guessed correctly who it was at the beginning, it threw me for a loop when Cassel's mother was hinted at as the murderer. But only until the next clue came along and I settled back into my seat, confident THIS time at how it was.

There were other pleasant surprises as well but unfortunately the one that I had been the most excited about, that Daneca was actually a curse worker, wasn't well handed in my book. I found her a little bit insensitive towards Sam's reaction to the revelation. Her personality suddenly took a more complaining turn which was quite different from the girl who used to make sharp Cassel jumpy (I just had to do it SOME time!). The other ones were great on the other hand.

The world building, as always, was incredible. I remember reading a review that mentioned how people were supposed to use touch screens/pads on mentioned laptops and smartphones when everyone was supposed to wear gloves and I think that in this parallel universe, they were probably made with that in mind. One thing that fascinated me was the naked hand. I really, really loved the idea of how intimate touching someone with bare hands was due to the fear of curse working. It's the ultimate sign of trust in their world and a prospective I find much more scintillating than sex. Speaking of which, perhaps this was already explained but do people take off their gloves when they have sex? It seems like wearing gloves while love making would be extremely awkward.

Red Glove did not live up to my expectations set up by White Cat. Compared to the twist machinations, the mystery and the twists of its predecessor, the con here was so predictable that I literally thought they were going to pull another fast one towards the end. When the killer was revealed, I was so disappointed. The best thing about this series is the thought behind all the crime, even the smaller ones, so seeing everything laid out so simply, which I hope was not done in favor of the love, is disparaging.

All in all=☆☆

*ARC provided by the publishers at Sim & Schuster's GrabGalley.

**Summary taken from Goodreads

Black Cat (WARNING: RIFE WITH SPOILERS)

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.

Holly Black has created a gripping tale of mobsters and dark magic where a single touch can bring love — or death — and your dreams might be more real than your memories.

White Cat was one of those stories that you aren't sure what you feel exactly until that thing hits you. The thing that decides it all. It could be a bad thing, like a certain twist that you saw coming literally miles away. White Cat certainly had its fair share of predictable plot twists. The biggest one of which was more obvious than others. Because of these twists, it is impossible of reviewing the story inch by inch without spoiling it.

Going back to "that thing", it can be summed up with one name: Lila.

Lila is by far the best character in this book. Cassel himself comes in second with a couple of major flaws but Lila triumphs him several times over.

Numero Uno: she was the white cat, which all of you will know by chapter three. And I love cats. Cats are my favorite animals with birds coming in second and possibly wolves. (And NO I am not a twihard; I loved wolves before they became a sad cliche.)

Dos: Maybe my brain is tired from the amount of stress I've gone through but I don't remember Lila crying once. She's rife with male characteristics, which I remember everyone attributing to Katniss of the Hunger Games, and has the ability of all Male YA Heros to make the protagonist short of breath, weak in the knees and completely and irrevocably confused. Despite his insistence that he's still in love with this "other" girl. When Lila announces her intention of getting revenge, it's Cassel who has that soft heart, who convinces her to letting his brothers go. Which brings me to the next point:

Tres: Lila is also the Heir. The Chosen One. But unlike Cassel, she's determined to make people understand that she's the boss. Even after three years of being stuck in a cage as she describes, even when she goes right for her father, it's not to cry on his shoulder, it's not to ask him to get revenge. That's her job. Lila plans ahead, knowing the consequences of the wrong move. She wants her existence a secret so she can get her own vengeance and show her daddy who's boss.

Can I stress that enough?

Lila was a dream worker but other than tormenting Cassel with nightmares, I don't recall her using it to get back the people who tried to kill her.

Cassel is another strong character but the whole I-have-no-powers-oh-wait-my-parents-hid-it-from-me-to-keep-me-safe-because-I'm-suuuuuuper-powerful trope is tired and so, so played out. I thought that was the way the book was going at first and then a third way through I was getting the inkling that maybe Holly Black was going to keep him without powers - which would have been extremely, extremely kickass - and then halfway through BAM! "Dude, I have powers!" Le sigh. Throughout the book his voice even changes from being poetic and a little lost in time to teenagerish and text-modern. I understand the whole growing up like the Mafia but I think his tone should be a little more stable unless there is a real explanation behind it.

The whole book is a little like that. The one transition, in which Cassel figures out what his brothers have done and that he's another super-speshul, was far too confusing. When I had to read it twice to understand where the connection between the two had come from, I knew there was something up with that. It happened twice again, right after Lila was turned back and the whole confrontation scene between Zacharov, "Grandad", Anton, Barron and Cassel. Maybe Black should get someone to look over her manuscripts a little more closely. People think that writing in first person is the easiest way to write but in reality it is the hardest, especially when you're writing in the present tense. Some things that make sense to you, might not make sense at all to the reader.

I don't know if it was my eBook that was acting weird but there were also these random breaks in the paragraphs that made me do a double take. If it wasn't a mistake done in part of by the transfer, it is incredibly jarring. At the end of the book, there's another paragraph break that was entirely unnecessary and would have done the book a lot more service by melding them together. The book I reviewed the other day, Between Here and Forever did the past thing much more smoothly, sometimes in shorter chapters or just suffusing into the overall narrative. It would have benefited to have done the same.

I did not like the ending. I thought that it was a complete backward step into how Black had set up Lila's character. In fact, it felt a little bit like she had just thrown that in there to make a series. I mean, come on, maybe some people and publishers would have been disappointed that it wouldn't continue but I frankly would have thought it to be a much more thought-provoking book if it had ended with Cassel wondering if Lila would ever get over him or the time she had spent as a cat. (Unless of course there are some finer points which I have missed beforehand that set up the continuation of the novel, in that case, I apologize for the rant - the series thing is becoming a cliche in itself.)

The world building, on the other hand, is an amazing, brilliant piece to this story. I honestly applaud Black for the amount of creativity it took to create this alternate universe. The magical aspects of it, including the reactions of the "normal" society, strongly reminded me of Diana Wynne Jones's dimensions. However, most of this world was told, through the paragraph breaks that I mentioned before, which made from a much less compelling read. Everything from the history to the consequences to the types of magic were told inn a heavy handed way that irked me a little every time I read them.

Other than that the themes in the book were done well. The honesty and trust issues Cassel was having is a problem lots of teens suffer from and the fact that his stemmed from more of a lack of responsible parental figures over the more important years of his life is exactly the kind of thing that some teens can relate to. Everyone hates the thought of turning into their parent when they were a teen. I loved the fact that the protagonist wasn't sure if Lila was crazy or not and the same with his mother. It was a little bit of perspective that was better done especially at the end of the book (despite the ending).

All in all=☆☆☆.