ARC Review: The Coldest Girl in Coldtown by: Holly Black

The Coldest Girl in Coldtown by: Holly Black (Sept. 3, 2013)

432 pages

Genre: YA/Vampires

Source: A free copy from NetGalley for my honest review.

Purchase: Barnes and Noble | The Book Depository | Amazon

Goodreads Summary: 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.

My Review    

The Coldest Girl in Coldtown is one of those books that you are either going to like or just not.  I don’t think there really is an in between. I am a fan of vampire novels and Holly Black so I decided to give it a chance. I enjoyed this interesting take on vampires living openly in society and are for the most part are being confined in Coldtowns where some humans also live, I mean they need food (although most of the humans that live there want to live there hoping to be turned into a vampire), but the politics behind all that you will have to discover by reading the book yourself because I don't want to get into all of that here. But even with its uniqueness I also had some issues with the book as well. Overall I liked it, but I wish I could have loved it. The Coldest Girl in Coldtown is a dark and twisty tale.

The Coldest Girl in Coldtown opens with a bloody scene and the race to survival for Tana begins. It’s too bad this race isn’t as fast paced once you get further into the book as the opening chapters makes you believe. It’s a little slow at times and there are flashbacks that I normally enjoy in books but for some reason they didn’t work here. Instead of adding more to the story it made it choppy and they were just annoying.

Tana is an interesting and complex character. I enjoyed watching her try to make decisions throughout the book on how to handle the situation she is put in after she wakes up at the party with just about everyone dead. The two males she is on the run with added a nice little touch of conflict. I can’t say that any of the characters are too memorable though.

The biggest turn off for me while reading was that there is of course a vampire-human type romance that verges on insta-love and with how much the human dislikes vampires this had me scratching my head. Since I found this book to be more unique when dealing with vampires I was hoping this romance wouldn’t be in it, taking away some of its uniqueness. Especially since they mention in the book that it’s crazy how vampires are romanticized.  

In the end it was a good read (there is a pretty darn good twist near the end) although nowhere near as awesome as I thought it was going to be. I say read it if you like vampire stories, especially ones that have romance. If you are over the whole vampire thing then I doubt you will like this one.

**I received a free copy from NetGalley for my honest review.