Supernatural Romance, Magic and Mystery by Holly Black: White Cat

Are you a fan of fiction that’s creepy, spooky, packed with werewolves and studded with vampires? Do you like your romance a touch on the gothic side and your bad boys not just bad, but possibly undead along with that? If that’s the case, then you’re probably already well acquainted with the supernatural romance genre, which has cropped up and increasingly taken over on the shelves of our bookstores in recent years. This in addition to having a respectable – after a fashion – presence on the e-book websites mushrooming on the internet e.g. Ellora’s Cave.

A lot of these books are on the red-hot side, quite often with some eye-poppingly rapid and matter-of-fact couplings, whether between humans, dark, mysterious undead creatures of the night or some combination of the two. If that isn’t entirely to your taste and you’re looking for something a little more sedate and innocent, yet still a touch creepy and otherworldly, then Holly Black may be the author for you to check out.

White Cat, by the author of the children’s Spiderwick Chronicles series, is being marketed as a book for adults. Since, juding by a reading, it is very definitely targeted at young adults (or as you might at one time have known them, teenagers), this seems a little odd. Certainly the love action in the book is reasonably tame (which is just fine for plenty of us romance readers, I’m sure. Certainly I’ve flicked through enough ‘hot’ or ‘hot paranormal’ romances which only induced winces and thoughts of ‘he’d have her eye out doing that’, to be quite happy with only relatively moderate and subtle physical interaction between the male and female protagonists.

The basic premise of the story might be summed up as saying it is set in a magical universe, in which the exercise of magical powers requires skin-to-skin, specifically hand-to-hand contact in order to be effective. Only a small proportion of the population has such powers, and their use is proscribed, while their possessors are treated as criminals. The entire population wear gloves as a matter of course, in order to avoid being 'worked'. This amounts to being controlled and having a magic spell cast over one in whatever manner the gifted person, or 'worker', is able, e.g. influencing emotions or memories. Since the use of such abilities is outlawed, the only groups who wield such powers are notorious crime families.

The hero of the novel is Cassel, youngest brother of such a family, and the only person in it without any such powers. He is dependent on his family for protection – especially since he killed the girl he was in love with. But can he really trust them – or his memories?

As stated, this is an odd book to be marketed as a novel for adults, given that the protagonists are teenagers and the material is skewed such as to be suitable for that age group. However the writing is of terrific quality and carries you through such quibbles. Do you love magical mystery, murder and mayhem? You could do worse than check out White Cat by Holly Black.