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!

Review- New Girl

Title: New Girl
Author: Page Harbison
Publisher: Harlequin Teen
Find it here: Amazon, Goodreads
Source: ARC compliments of Harlequin and NetGalley

A contemporary young-adult retelling inspired by the classic 1938 romantic suspense bestseller Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier.

They call me 'New Girl'...

Ever since I arrived at exclusive, prestigious Manderly Academy, that’s who I am. New girl. Unknown. But not unnoticed—because of her.

Becca Normandy—that’s the name on everyone’s lips. The girl whose picture I see everywhere. The girl I can’t compare to. I mean, her going missing is the only reason a spot opened up for me at the academy. And everyone stares at me like it’s my fault.

Except for Max Holloway—the boy whose name shouldn’t be spoken. At least, not by me. Everyone thinks of him as Becca’s boyfriend…but she’s gone, and here I am, replacing her. I wish it were that easy. Sometimes, when I think of Max, I can imagine how Becca’s life was so much better than mine could ever be.

And maybe she’s still out there, waiting to take it back.

My thoughts: 

New Girl was definitely an interesting book to read. Half the story is told from Becca’s point of view before she goes missing and the other half is told from “new girl’s” point of view who essentially replaces Becca at the private boarding school. As soon a “new girl” arrives, most of the student body snubs her because they’re upset that the school was so quick to replace Becca’s spot. Now, I didn’t go to a boarding school nor did I got to public school so I find it very hard to believe that all the students break curfew, drink, do drugs, have casual sex and break the rules all willy nilly. I guess I was a really good teenager.

The author does not reveal the main character’s first name and she is referred to, throughout the whole book, as “new girl”. It’s supposed to be this big to-do where her name is finally revealed in one of the last pages. So when her name is finally revealed I think to myself, “wait, that’s not her name, I thought her name was something else”, not realizing that she had been referred to as “new girl” the whole book. So that point was lost on me.

Even though I liked the book and I thought the story was interesting, I felt like the mystery lessened towards the end. I really love books that completely catch me off guard and blow me away with the “who done it” at the end. But I had pretty much guessed what had happened by the end. I’m giving New Girl 2 hearts because I thought the characters were unrealistic and I pretty much guessed the mystery.

Review- Harbinger

Title: Harbinger
Author: Sara Wilson Etienne
Publisher: Putnam
Find it here: Amazon, Goodreads
Source: ARC from Putnam

When sixteen-year-old Faye arrives at Holbrook Academy, she doesn't expect to find herself exactly where she needs to be. After years of strange waking visions and nightmares, her only comfort the bones of dead animals, Faye is afraid she's going crazy. Fast.

But her first night at Holbrook, she feels strangely connected to the school and the island it sits on, like she's come home. She's even made her first real friends, but odd things keep happening to them. Every morning they wake on the floors of their dorm rooms with their hands stained red.

Faye knows she's the reason, but what does it all mean? The handsome Kel tries to help her unravel the mystery, but Faye is certain she can't trust him; in fact, he may be trying to kill her - and the rest of the world too.

Rich, compelling writing will keep the pages turning in this riveting and tautly told psychological thriller.

My thoughts:

Reading Harbinger did not go as well as I had planned. When asked if I would like to review it, I was so excited! I featured as one of my WoW’s because I loved the cover and I thought the synopsis sounded fantastic. I got it pretty early on so I put off reading it closer to the release date. I started it in November and put it down 80 pages into. The release date came and went and I decided to give it another try. Maybe when I tried to read it the first time I was going through some kind of reading slump and I might love it this time around. I hoped for these things, I really did! I so wanted to love this book.

First of all, I want to say that I know there has been some controversy around negative reviews. I personally don’t see anything wrong with them as long as the blogger/review is not personally attacking the author. I believe it’s rude and inappropriate and if someone has something to say to an author, it should be done in private and not on a public forum. With that being said, I’m giving my honest opinion of a book that just didn’t connect for me as it did with others.

I’m going to try and tell you exactly why I didn’t like this book but first just picture me struggling through every last page. Since I got this book for review and I wanted to speak honestly about my thoughts, I knew I had to read the whole thing.

A big part of why the book just fell flat for me was the characters. I wasn’t able to connect to Faye or Kel or any of the other characters for that matter. I felt like we weren’t given a chance to get to know them. All of a sudden they’re thrown into this school without a solid pretext of their lives before. Even after the last page I couldn’t tell you who was good and who was evil or even what had just happened.

I got the sense that Harbinger is set in an America that is not the same as the present America. It seemed to be a poor attempt at building a dystopian world. Nothing was clearing stated about the world outside of the academy.

Even after all my dislikes, this book still had some redeeming qualities. It was creepy and I liked that. It was also so confusing that I read to the end just to know what happened. These are all good elements for a book to keep the audience reading. I also liked that the island and the land that the school was on had a past and a history. I really enjoyed when the sections of the journal was revealed. It really kept me reading.

I’m glad there are readers out there who really enjoyed this book but it just wasn’t for me. Which is why I can’t justify giving it any more than 2 hearts.

Review: Possess

Title: Possess
Author: Gretchen McNeil
Publisher: Balzar + Bray
Find it here: Amazon, Goodreads
Source: Purchased

Fifteen-year-old Bridget Liu just wants to be left alone: by her mom, by the cute son of a local police sergeant, and by the eerie voices she can suddenly and inexplicably hear. Unfortunately for Bridget, it turns out the voices are demons – and Bridget has the rare ability to banish them back to whatever hell they came from.

Terrified to tell people about her new power, Bridget confides in a local priest who enlists her help in increasingly dangerous cases of demonic possession. But just as she is starting to come to terms with her new power, Bridget receives a startling message from one of the demons. Now Bridget must unlock the secret to the demons' plan before someone close to her winds up dead – or worse, the human vessel of a demon king.

My take:

I bought this book for three reasons: 1.  I saw a whole bunch of bloggers get advanced copings and they all said they were super excited to read it and that it would be really good to read around Halloween because it sounds scary.  2. Gretchen McNeil was going to be at the Orange County Book Fair, signing and promoting her book on a panel of authors.  3.  The cover is incredibly creepy looking!  Honestly, these reasons aren't very good reasons to buy a book.  I hadn't actually read a single review before I purchased this book to gauge whether or not I would like it.  And let me tell you, my standards are not very high for horror books.  If it scars me, I like it.  

I'm not going to outright say it was a terrible book because it had it's scary parts like the room full of porcelain dolls scene.  But I could also tell that it was a debut novel and the authors very first book.  The setting was good, in my opinion, which helped to give it an ominous effect.  I'm pretty sure is was set in San Francisco so it was always foggy and added to the whole creep factor. 

The reason why it just didn't seem all that scary to me is because the main character never seemed genuinely scared.  Bridget is very snarky, which I normally like, but if all this crazy demon stuff was really happening, any normal person would be scared out of their pants, instead of constantly making funny remarks.  I would definitely classify this book as very light horror.  Side note: what priest in their right mind employs the help of a teenage girl to help him exercise demons!?!

In conclusion, it was an okay book, but if you're a hard-core horror fan such as I, skip this book.  It was disappointing.  Another book added to the "don't judge a book by it's cover shelf".