White Cat

The Curse Workers, Book One

By: Holly Black

Narrated by: Jesse Eisenberg

Length: 6 hrs and 40 mins

Publisher's summary

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'e all criminals. Many become mobsters and con artists. But not Cassel. He hasn't got magic, 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.

Cassel has carefully built up a facade of normalcy, blending into the crowd. But his facade starts to crumble when he finds himself 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. As Cassel begins to suspect he's part of a huge con game, he must unravel his past and his memories. To find out the truth, Cassel will have to outcon the conmen.

©2010 Holly Black (P)2010 Random House

Good, solid series

I love Holly Black and I'm less of a Jesse E. fan, nonetheless it's a solid series.

Meh - least favorite Holly Black novel

Performance was weird, narrator had difficultly keeping pace. He struggled to keep the story moving and spoke slowly a lot. I was disappointed with the slow story line and repetitiveness of the same things happening. I found myself kind of annoyed with the main character, hopefully there will be character growth in book 2. I thought the ending plans for the crime family were done hastily & I was left unsatisfied with the state of affairs. Holly Black did such a great job with her other novels & this one fell so very flat.

She did do a good job leaving off on a cliff hanger for a followup novel and building lovable side characters.

Great Story, Poor Narration - To Distraction

I read this book and adored everything about it. The world, it's settings, it's characters, and it's mystery. I had been very pleased to see it on Audible after reading it. I had been further enthused when I saw Jesse Eisenberg would read it, even though he was an unexpected reader. He's an actor and I felt like he would definitely narrate very well.

I bought it and I could barely get through it. I admit, that sometimes some things are better read than said. This is one of those instances. Eisenberg's voice is not the kind you would expect to narrate, which is why I was so surprised. But I wanted to give the benefit of the doubt.

Jesse doesn't have a good range of voices or inflection. Everything is spoken clearly, but nearly emotion-less. The males characters are somewhat indistinguishable from each other. The females aren't squeaky and Jesse handles them ok, but the lack of depth of his voice makes everything run together. It becomes boring. Very boring.

The moments where gets it right are few and far in between. I think the very end of the book is when I actually feel anything concerning the characters. Hopefully, if he reads the next installment, he gets better.

You should definitely read this book instead of listening and if you're curious, preview it before buying.

great book

was recommended by a friend. I loved this book and will continue the series. this would be a great book to big screen production!!!

Not one of my favs but kept me interested…

Although this isn’t one of my favorite Holly Black books, she kept me interested enough to enjoy it. Overall, it was pretty good.

loved it!

can not wait to start the next one! I loved the story line and how it kept my attention

Like the storyline

What did you like about the performance? What did you dislike?

Sometimes I couldn't tell the difference between one character from the next because he used the same tone of voice half the time between the brothers.

great story

another great story by Black... but narrator is definitely no Jim Dale, but it didn't ruin the experience. once you get into the rhythm of his narration it's OK. this audio book would've been amazing with a more talented reader.

Exceptional!

Beautiful written, engagingly narrated. This series has a wonderfully realized and believable urban fantasy setting. Fast-paced and engrossing. 5 stars. Maintains its charm after multiple readings.

Ehhh

Holly is my favorite author of all time and this book is just kinda...meh. It's okay. She doesn't often use male protagonists and it kinda shows a little here and there, plus the first person perspective throws me off. The performance however is terrible, Jessie Eiesenberg is a complete robot for the entire reading and I'm sure this experience would have been much more satisfying with someone else doing the reading. This is actually the only book I've ever sped up just to get through it so I didn't have to hear his voice anymore.