To start this review, I’d just like to say that I’ve been following Holly Black for a while now.  I liked her Tithe series and she’s friends with a lot of my other favorite YA authors, so I actually even ended up meeting her at a signing once.  But for some reason, maybe because I never read The Spiderwick Chronicles as a child, or because faeries, even cruel ones have just never really appealed to me, I was never as into her books as the others.

When I got White Cat though, everything changed for me.  Suddenly, I understood something I’d only briefly gathered before… This woman is clever. 

And then, just like that, I loved her.  And I had to have Red Glove immediately, the day it came out. 

I was not disappointed in the least.

Excellent at her craft, Ms. Black weaves a tale of crime and intrigue, a world parallel to our own yet extraordinarily different.  The smokey details of her mafia are thrilling to read about, and if you honestly don’t wish you were a Curse Worker after reading this series, then we were not reading the same book!

The plot thickens in Red Glove (you should definitely read White Cat first if you want to know what’s going on!) and I love how the nagging “whodunit?” of a puzzle niggles at the back of your mind while you try to put the pieces together.  Even though the story takes place in modern-day, I feel like I’m in 1940′s New York City when I’m reading, trying to navigate through the mafia of criminal royalty… with curses. 

All in all, I love the world that Ms. Black has set up.  If you’re unfamiliar with the Curse Workers series, there are seven different types of curseworkers – luck, dreams, memory, emotional, physical, transformation and death – and the power the characters have usually depends on the severity of the gift they posess.  At the same time though, for every curse a worker puts on someone, there’s a “blowback,” causing the same curse to rebound back at them, the worker, on a lesser scale.

Although there are some new faces, the main cast returns in this book, despite each having been changed significantly since the events of the last one.  Lila, for instance, has lost her signature cattiness (no pun intended) in exchange for doting love on our protagonist.  After a whole summer apart, Cassel tries to find a balance between how far he can stay away from her and how close it’s okay to get without taking advantage of her oh-so-willing love for him; after all, she’s cursed, and what she’s feeling now isn’t real… Or is it?

Cassel’s mother, an emotional worker who cursed Lila to love her son in the first place, is easily one of the best parts of the whole book.  Taking rich old men by storm, she seduces and then pounces, swaying emotions with a careful brush of bare fingers, all the while sweetly encouraging her son to join in the fun.  I love her because you can tell that she really is trying to be motherly, but the blowback of her powers makes her unstable and kind of dangerous, despite her many attempts to give her children what she thinks they need.

Cassel’s brother Baron, and his friends Sam and Daneca also play supporting roles, as do his death-worker grandfather, and Lila’s crime lord father, Mr. Zacharov.  I especially enjoyed the other, less prominant characters, such as the suspcious school administrators, FBI investigators who mean business and a cameo from our favorite “Alternate-Universe Jace” who has moved on from being paranoid by Paradise Lost and is apparently now dating his half-sister.  (Kudos if you get the reference to a certain other series, written by one of Holly’s close friends!)

All in all, I adored this book, and its many twists kept me guessing until I had reached the very last page… Upon which I couldn’t help but gape that I’d have to wait for the sequel.

Red Glove by Holly Black
PLOT
Just when Cassel is beginning to adjust to life after White Cat, the FBI suddenly shows up and blackmails him into investigating his brother's murder. Meanwhile, Lila is deeply, falsely in love with him and her father wants to recruit him to the Zacharov crime family/mob.
CHARACTERS
Every character was special in their own way, corny as that sounds... I loved Cassel's witty lines and Lila's feistiness and Daneca's passionate support of Worker rights. And I think I might have a girl-crush on Cassel's mom... I feel like the only way to describe her is as a really sketchy yet syrupy-sweet motherly-type person, who also cons people for the fun of messing with them and spending all their money.
THEME
When you con people, always think of yourself first, and others later? Blood is thicker than water? Loyalty to the mob? A combination of the three?
STYLE
Told in first person, present tense, the writing style is easy to follow yet also surprisingly detailed. Sometimes Cassel will think something really deep and quotable, but it's not forced at all. I always feel like I'm in the moment with these books, and I like the way Cassel thinks.
SETTING
Hmm... Set mostly in Cassel's boarding school, but also occasionally straying elsewhere. Some places were familiar from the first book, but I didn't always have a clear picture of what things looked like; Ms. Black seems to focus more on the characters and storyline than description of the random places Cassel goes.
EXPOSITION
As I said before, I really love Holly's writing style. The pacing was excellent, but I sometimes felt a few steps ahead of Cassel nonetheless. Overall, there were times when things were predictable, but I think that the overall story arc really makes up for that.

Overall
In conclusion, this book was awesome. If you haven't read White Cat, you should read that one first, but I assure you, you won't be disappointed!

Also, make sure you check out Lila’s Story, a thirteen-part extra from the the series revealing a lot of insight into the white cat, herself.