I absolutely adored the first of this series, WHITE CAT. In fact, I thought it was one of the best books I read the whole year. I bought this one in hardcover before I even read it–something I rarely do. When you read a book that knocks it out of the park like WHITE CAT did, how can the second in the series possibly compare?
Well, it does. Favorably. It’s not as good as WHITE CAT but that’s mostly because it didn’t have as fun of a mystery as the first did. It does have a mystery, but it’s a straightforward murder mystery. The plot is fueled more by “what is Cassel going to do to get out of this situation” rather than “what the hell is going on here?”
This book reminds me of why I like to read YA. There’s romance, but it’s sweet and tense rather than tawdry. Cassel is competent and brave, but he’s still just a kid and does the kind of things that we all did when we were dumb teenagers (like tell your friends secrets that they really don’t need to know.) He tries so hard to do the right thing, and his circumstance (and especially his family) make that so difficult.
I think my favorite thing about this series is that it has the tight writing and likeable characters that Holly Black always bring to the table, but unlike her other work, it doesn’t have any fairies.
For those who aren’t familiar with this series, it involves a world that’s almost exactly like ours except that some people “workers” are able to work curses on people by touching them with bare hands. Most of these people fall into lives of crime, including Cassel’s family. You can read this book without having read the first one, but I recommend reading WHITE CAT first because RED GLOVE will spoil some of the fun.
