Review: The Coldest Girl in Coldtown by Holly Black

The Coldest Girl on Coldtown by Holly Black
Published on September 3, 2013
Publisher: Little Brown Books for Young Readers

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:
Okay I am definitely in the minority here.  I really want to hide while I write this because I know I am probably going to catch hale here but I didn't love this.  I didn't even really like it to be honest.  Instead of writing a somewhat ranty review I am just going to list and explain the things I did not like that way hopefully no one gets offend or upset by my thoughts.  Here goes...

1. The Vampires:
Okay see I have read many vampire books and while yes they are usually always dangerous there is always that fine line that they will fall either one way or the other.  If they are bad then they are really bad and creepy and EVERYONE runs away screaming then they fall on one side.  If they are not bad meaning yes they drink blood but they are romanticized and don't the main ones in the book do everything in their power to not kill people then they fall on the other side.  Blacks vampires don't really fall into either category and it bugged me.  She created monsters that took no regard for human life but then let her main heroine fall for one...yep bugged person right here.  Why is she kissing a vampire, one that is supposed to be the worst one of them all??  And in this story some people wanted to be vampires and they would do just about anything to become one and then in the next paragraph we are told how vile these creatures are and how no one can go out after dark.  I still don't understand which side of the line these vampires were on and I need to know for my own personal preference.

2. Inconsistency
This story has a lot of loop holes in my opinion.  We are told once you are on Coldtown there is no getting out.  Okay got it, but then somethings happen and it comes out that a few vampires that are at a particular party were actually at the party that Tana escaped from in her hometown which is not a Coldtown.  How did the vampires get in and out??  We aren't even given an explanation!  Why make rules for your world if you are just going to disregard them??  I am also baffled by the whole new vampire, infection, old vampire system.  I never grasped the whole process of becoming a vampire and I blame this on inconsistency.  We are told so many different things and in my mind everything became jumbled.  Not to mention the whole new born vampire thing where they are supposedly crazy, but then when Tana's friend turns he is okay after ripping into only 2 people.  I thought newborns were crazy for awhile??

3. Too Much Description
I am a fan of world building.  If I read something then I want to know the ins and outs of everything but there has to be more than just that.  Black over describe everything.  I didn't need to know what everyone was wearing and how the sun looked in every chapter.  It just got to be too much.  I needed more story and development.

4. The Story
Okay this is my biggest complaint.  I felt like the author focused more on describing things than actually writing a story.  I didn't feel anything when the main character went through the big climax of the story.  It was like oh okay that happened big whoppee.  There wasn't enough character development for me to really feel for her and sympathize.  You know the whole story felt like a dangling carrot.  I could almost grab it and then something would happen and it would be stolen from me yet again.  There were a lot of storylines and side characters that jumbled everything else up too.  I still don't honestly know what this story was supposed to be about, I get what I read but if that was the story then I was really deceived.  Nothing really happened except for a crazy vampires revenge and a strange turn of events for the main character.  No big scenes except for maybe 2 if you really want to call them big and nothing is really resolved.  I was bored and not invested which does not ever make for a good read in my opinion.  And you know I remember reading a short story written by this author about this world and I loved it so I am really disappointed that this full length novel didn't work out for me.

Okay that's it, my complaints.  I got a little ranty and I am sorry for that.  I hope you don't take my word for it I know lots of people who loved this book so please give it a shot.  As for me I am going to stick with a different set of vampires.

2 Snowflakes