The Coldest Girl in Coldtown by Holly Black Review

Title:The Coldest Girl in Coldtown
Author: Holly Black
Pages: 419
Publication Date:September 3rd 2013 by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Source: Library, ebook, Also won an ARC from Armchair BEA
Link: Official Site, Goodreads

Tana lives in a world where walled cities called Coldtowns exist. In them, quarantined monsters and humans mingle in a decadently bloody mix of predator and prey. The only problem is, once you pass through Coldtown’s gates, you can never leave. One morning, after a perfectly ordinary party, Tana wakes up surrounded by corpses. The only other survivors of this massacre are her exasperatingly endearing ex-boyfriend, infected and on the edge, and a mysterious boy burdened with a terrible secret. Shaken and determined, Tana enters a race against the clock to save the three of them the only way she knows how: by going straight to the wicked, opulent heart of Coldtown itself. The Coldest Girl in Coldtown is a wholly original story of rage and revenge, of guilt and horror, and of love and loathing from bestselling and acclaimed author Holly Black.

I recently read The Coldest Girl in Coldtown by Holly Black for my Young Adult Book Club's July book of the month discussions. I was pleasantly surprised by this book.  I am so used to what seems to be the same old same old vampire books so the fact that this one is a new a different take on vampires was fun. I was drawn to this book because of the cover art.. and the fact that it is a stand alone novel.  Yeah for not being a trilogy. 

Basically.. being a vampire is a virus.  There were ancient vampires that had this virus but kept it contained in a community.  One day a vampire finally decides to infect other people.  If you were infected.. you could sweat out the virus in 88 days.  But those days were torture and you had to be chained up.  If you drank human blood during this time you would be turned into a a full vampire. The US government would take all infected people and move them to Coldtowns.  There were I think 4 or 5 in the US. Our main characters consist of these types of characters. An interesting take on being a vampire.


There is a neat and interesting quote at the beginning of each chapter. I like how the quotes started out saying death is great and peaceful and then as the book progressed the quotes started talking about how death is a bad thing. So at first being a vampire is glamorous and then not so much. Though .. I started reading the ebook and finished reading with a physical copy. In the ebook the quotes are in the same print as all the other words but in the physical copy they are in a really pretty handwriting. Not sure why the ebook couldn't do this same font?

The romance in this book falls flat. In fact.. it did stir up a good discussion about instalove in the group discussions.  I never felt that the main characters Tana and Gavriel really had this epic romance. The whole media frenzy in this book was quite interesting. There are little Coldtowns where vampires are gathered together by the government and there are live feeds coming out of these towns.  I can just see us glued to our tvs watching this world happening.  These feeds make living like a vampire look great so people actually try to get into these Coldtowns to become vampires.

Coldtown is so interesting that I even think there could be short stories based on characters that live there.  I don't want a sequel or anything but maybe a story in an anthology.  I would recommend this book to those of you wanting to read about vampires and are just tired of the same old same old stoires. 

The crystal ball says:

Clouds are covering! A read that lets me down every now and then but peaks out of the clouds!