Release Date: September 3, 2013 / Audio unabridged edition released by Hachette Audio
Format: MP3 via Overdrive
Pages: 419 (Hardcover) / Audio Length: Approx 12 hours
Narrator: Christine Lakin
Source: Library Borrow
Genre: YA Urban Fantasy
Review Date: January 18, 2014
Rating: 3 bookmarks
Synopsis: 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.
I enjoyed that this book was told in third person. Because of this we got a lot of story. In addition to what's going in the present, we also got the history of vampires and of a childhoods of both Tana and Gavriel. Toward the end, we even got one part from Tana's little sister, Pearl's POV. I thought the secondary characters had their purpose and were mostly likable...or evil.
The premise of the vampires in this book is that one turns from an infection received from being bitten. It seems very strange to me that Tana, has been bitten three times in her life and yet to turn into a vampire. Take that back, twice she’d been bitten and hadn't turned. We have no clue what results from the third bite. Not only that, but in this world, one can sweat out the vampire bite infection. Who knew! And it only takes something like 66 or 68 days...some crazy long amount of time.
I enjoyed the turn of events concerning Gavriel. For the entire book, he isn't exactly what he says he is. It’s clear that he likes Tana and wants to protect her, yet still he seeks vengeance on his enemies. Gavriel’s vengeance seems to take precedence over almost everything else. When the entire situation unfolds at the end, it's pretty clever.