The Coldest Girl in Coldtown

But if you didn't believe in monsters, then how were you going to be able to keep safe from them?

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Not Holly Black's best. It's the usual 'feisty girl holds vampires at bay, but falls in love with a nice one' thing. Still, even mediocre Holly Black is well written.

4.25

I can tell that Holly Black spent a LOT of time doing some serious worldbuilding for this book, and I ended up feeling super immersed in a setting unlike anything I've ever read before. I enjoyed this book but dang, I'm really surprised it's considered YA.

Well... I suppose I'm very much not the target audience for this?

Vampires. Teenagers making impulsively bad decisions. Welcome to Coldtown.

I liked this book. I'm surprised at how much I liked it, actually. I've read a string of YA paranormal this spring and this one is one of my favorites so far. Tana was a decent heroine--independent, yet vulnerable. She did stupid things and made bad decisions, but she was aware when she did. She's drawn to Gavriel even though she knows it is a bad decision. She tries to help Aidan even though he doesn't deserve it. And she is brave even when she doesn't want to be.

As for the ending, I thought it fit the book perfectly and I am oddly glad it is a stand-alone novel.

I know that bitter and lonely 35-year-old men aren't really the target audience for Young Adult paranormal vampire fiction, but I thought I was really going to like this book. The concept seemed interesting, as it keeps a lot of traditional vampire story stuff, while adding some new stuff to create a pretty interesting version of a world where vampirism is a disease quarantined in cities called Coldtowns. I did really enjoy a lot of the vampire parts of the book. Unfortunately, I couldn't get into the parts about teenage girls making out with ancient vampire boys.

Review to follow.