Review: The Coldest Girl in Coldtown by Holly Black

Title: The Coldest Girl in Coldtown
Author: Holly Black
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Release Date: September 03, 2013
Source: Library
Find it Here: Amazon, 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.

My thoughts:

There has been a whole lot of hype surrounding this book and people have been giving it rave reviews almost across the board. People have said that it’s a unique take on the overdone vampire story and that they found it very refreshing. I’m definitely going to be in the minority when it comes to The Coldest Girl in Coldtown because I don’t think that it’s all that great! So for this review I’m going to make a list of the problems and why it’s not all that unique.

1. Clocking in at over 400 pages, The Coldest Girl in Coldtown is just way too long especially since not much happens for most of the book. The first 30 pages start off really strong with a super gruesome scene of an entire party that has just been slaughtered. So I thought, “Yes! This is going to be great!!” But no. It was very slow and at times I questioned whether or not I was going to finish it.

2. Tana, the main character, is very unlikable and just makes horrible decisions. “Hey, let me save this vampire who could possibly drain me dry once we are out of danger. That’s an awesome idea!” “Instead of just dropping my newly turned vampire ex-boyfriend off at the nearest coldtown I’m actually going to go in and hang out for a little bit! That also sounds awesome!” Everything that happened to her is her own damn fault. She is just a flat character and was exactly the same person at the end as she was at the beginning.

3. If I thought Tana was unlikable and annoying, her little sister was even worse! What a naive little brat. The only purpose she served was as a plot device for the ending of the story. That’s it!!

4. In my humble opinion this certainly did not seem like a “unique” vampire story. In The Coldest Girl in Coldtown there are vampires who have been around for a very long time who worked tirelessly to keep their existence a secret. When a person gets bit by a vampire they then turn into a full-fledged vampire after consuming human blood. The older the vampire is the stronger the vampire is. The vampires get burned to ash if they are in direct sunlight. How is this in any way unique? The only part that I thought was remotely interesting was the coldtowns. But unfortunately there is not a lot of information there.

So overall the book was a bit of a letdown. It’s way too hyped for what it is. If someone wants to read a unique take on vampires, go read the Vampire Academy series by Richelle Mead. Now that’s what I call a good vampire story!