The Coldest Girl in Coldtown

[brigid]

“The Coldest Girl in Coldtown,” by Holly Black, is one of the most perfect Vampire books I’ve ever read, and I have read a lot of vampire books.

I’ve read other stuff by Holly Black and have liked it ok, and I follow her on Twitter and Pinterest and like what she posts, but I’ve never been BLOWN AWAY by her work until this book.

The book opens with Tana waking up shoeless in a bathtub after a bangin’ party with her high school peers. Vampires exist in her world, have for centuries (millennia?) but have been publicly recognized– and an epidemic-like threat– for only a few years. Humans do stupid things, and a popular thing among teenagers in Tana’s world is to have Sundown Parties in an isolated area. She and her friends were drinking heavily in a farm house, and Tana blacked out in the tub. As she gets up and gets her bearings, she realizes it’s really late and wonders if she’s the first one up or not.

And then she hits the living room and sees just how lucky she was to crash in the bathtub, hidden from sight.

Someone had apparently left a window open, and Vampires got in, and Tana is apparently the only survivor of a horrific massacre. Further panicked exploration results in the discovery of her shitty ex-boyfriend, who’s been infected by a vampire bite, and a not-quite-with-it chained up vampire.

Tana is the kind of person who rescues other people, so she gets them both out of there, and the story really begins.

Tana is exactly the sort of character I love. She’s strong, resourceful, charismatic, and kind hearted but also incredibly and heart-breakingly human. She’s strong because she has to be strong, she’s strong when she’s scared, she’s strong when she’s hurt, she’s strong when she needs help. She’s strong because she has to be strong, because if she stops being strong, nobody else will be strong for her. Her mom’s dead and her dad… well, a part of him died when her mom did. Tana is scarred both literally and figuratively, but that’s NOT her defining characteristic.

The world building is fantastic. How is Vampirism spread? What is Vampire society like? How did (and do) humans react to Vampires? What are Vampire politics like? How will the world change when the impossible becomes real and monsters stalk the shadows? What even IS a Vampire?

The story is exciting and engaging, very smart and well written. I stayed up way too late reading this book because I was so eager to see what happens next, and wound up reading it all in one sitting.

Over the past few years, especially the past few months, we’ve been really purging our home library of books and being super discriminating about what books we buy. This is absolutely one I’d add to my own library. There’s a lot of re-read value in it.

I rarely write really gushing reviews of books, but I just can’t express enough how much I love this book. It is very finely crafted. I would love to read more about Tana and her world (and the book ends at a bit of a cliff hanger) but the main story in the book is nicely resolved.

So. Very much a five star book. A++ would read again.

Mirrored from Thoughtful Consumption.