Theme : A girl who has a gift for carving ‘lucky’ wooden-charms. Her unusual gift attracts dangerous attention in a place where witches are burned. Scared for her life, she seeks the help of a mysterious stranger. But she soon becomes part of terrifying plan, darker than she could ever have dreamed.

A long time ago, in a market town by a looping river, there lived an orphan girl called Plain Kate. She was called this because her father had introduced her to the new butcher, saying “This is my beloved Katerina Svetlana, after her mother who died giving birth to her, God rest her soul, but I call her just plain Kate”. After that, she was called Plain Kate. But her father called her Kate, My Star. Plain Kate’s father Poitr was a good carver. He gave Kate a carving knife before most children might be given a spoon. She could whittle before she could walk. When she was still a child, she could carve a rose. In Kate’s little town of Samilae, people thought that there was magic in a knife. A person who could wield a knife well was, in their eyes, halfway to a witch. She receives accusations of being a witch, and for causing their bad luck. Her father always give her support and tell her “You are not a witch, Katerina. There is magic in the world and some of it is wholesome and some of it is not, the foolish will always treat you badly, because they think you are not beautiful”. She knew this was true. Plain Kate : She was plain as a stick, thin as a stick, and flat as a stick. She had one eye the colour of the river mud and one eye the colour of the river. Her nose was too long and her eye brows were too strong. Some even called her ‘witch-blade’. Misfortune hits Kate when her father dies of the ‘witch fever’, leaving her alone in the world. He was the only person she had left in the world and Kate the Carve has no one to protect her anymore. When Kate is turned out of her father’s shop by an indentured apprentice, she goes to live in the bottom drawer of her father’s stall, taking her tools and leather apron with her although the new apprentice would have them too, saying her father gave them to her. Kate adopts a grey male kitten, which she calls Taggle. One day she meet the unwanted attention of a witch, a male albino witch named Linay, who wants her soul and he grant the secret wish of her heart. When strange things start happening people blame Kate because some call her talent witch craft. She has to leave but before this she exchanges her shadow for her heart’s wish to not go alone all of this. So Linay grant her wish by making Taggle a wonderful, lovable talking cat. He is hilarious and their friendship seems more realistic than many human friendship so that Kate will not go through all this alone. Before giving too much away and before starts building a new life, she learns the truth of Linay’s evil intentions. She leaves with a clan of wanders and soon realizes that she can’t live without her shadow. Plain Kate must get it back from the witch Linay. Not getting back her shadow could mean disaster and not just for herself. So she decides to left Samilae to find back her shadow. Kate’s hectic journey as she searches for belonging and happiness and instead encounters cruelty and hardship on the way. She finds herself fighting for her life, in a long journey fraught with dangers. Kate meets a group of Roamers, who are like Gypsies. Roamers come to sell trained horses. The baker buys a horse from a set of twins and when Kate comes to give the baker, her only friend, the objarka he has asked her to carve, he takes her to the Roamers for Kate to join them. She is accepted by them but placed on notice for 6 months. In the Roamer set are the male twins: Behjet and Stivo, their mother, Daj and Stivo's daughter, Drina, who is younger than Kate and becomes her fast friend over time. Stivo's wife, Lenore, Drina's mother, was a witch and healer, who was burnt and drowned in the city of Lov. This is the crux of the story. Drina notices that Kate is shadow-less and tries her fledgling magic to bring back Kate's shadow. It is from there that things go from bad to worse with the ghost witch creating death and mayhem, until there is illness in the Roamers' camp for which Kate is blame, and a fire in which she burns but escapes and lives. Linay has extracted Kate's shadow in order to return to life his dead twin, Lenore, and to avenge the death from the city of Lov, and of every townspeople from Samilae to Lov. When Lenore died, Linay used magic to cut a hole in his shadow where his heart is, and brought Lenore to life as a ghost. But he needed a full shadow and daily blood sacrifices to bring her to life as a human. He eventually draws Kate's blood as well as his own. After they found Linay, they tried to persude him to not brought his sister who died Lenore back using the powerful magic but he refused. Then, to stop him, Taggle sacrifice himself. He ask Plain Kate to kill him. Taggle was a gift from Linay to Kate. So to stop Linay, Taggle must die. But Taggle’s death does not give any meaning because Lenore has been raised. After Lenore was bring back to the world, Linay die. After a few days, Lenore realized that, the dead should stay dead. So she used her magic to make Taggle life back. Taggle deserve to stay alive. Lenore said to Drina “It is such a gift to see you again, but it is a give that I cannot keep”. Lenore knows that a witch cannot give life, not perfectly, not forever. And finally Lenore also die because she knows the fact that, the dead should stay dead. Plain Kate and Taggle keep on living without any curse, not always without trouble but happily and well for a long time thereafter.

Moral Values * give and don’t want to get something back in return * treat people the way you want to be treated * respect your elders, espeacially your parents * be kind and generous and help others anyway you can * learn to forgive and forget * nothing is freely given but rather an exchanges of gift * be honest and loyal in a friendship why I choose this book I choose this book because when I first look at the cover, it looks so interesting but when I read the book I feel like the story is much better than the cover.