The Coldest Girl in Coldtown by Holly Black

I enjoyed taking part in Youtube's Answerly Book Club last month, that I just knew I had to take part in it again, especially when the new YA pick was a book that I had just received for Christmas, and was looking for a reason to read.

"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." - Goodreads

THE STORY:

At first I had a bit of a hard time getting into this book, but once it got into the actual plot, I just couldn't stop reading. I loved how Holly Black stayed true to a lot of the original myths about vampires, like their weaknesses and their appearance. However, the relationships in this book also made me ridiculous amounts of happy. So many different types of relationships and sexualities were represented in this book, including gay, straight, bisexual, and transgender people. Not only is this something that I strongly believe in, but it made me just so happy to see these relationships portrayed in a young adult book. I also really appreciated the way the characters reacted to these different sexualities. The characters who weren't straight were never treated as if they were different, their sexuality and their differences were simply acknowledged, and then things continued, which I think is a very important ideology for young people to adopt these days.

THE CHARACTERS:

I already mentioned how I loved the relationships in this book, but I also really enjoyed the characters in general. I loved Tana as our lead, I adored Aidan and Gavriel, I even enjoyed Lucien, our main villain. However, my favorite character in the whole novel is probably Valentina. She didn't really play a huge role in the book, but her entire being just made me happy. She was a fabulous side-character, and I would love to read more about her, if that ever became an option in the future.

MY THOUGHTS:

So basically I adored this book. Aside from the beginning being difficult for me to get into, I found it to be fun, fast paced, and at some points the gore almost made it difficult to read, which I found refreshing in its own way, because the violence of vampirism wasn't glossed over. This was my first Holly Black novel, but I will definitely be picking up more of her books in the future.

STAR RATING: ★★★★ 1/2