Akiva Reads

by Holly Black

The Coldest Girl in Coldtown has interesting world-building and great characters who share some really interesting and lovely non-romantic relationships. (A book where the ex-boyfriend is a main character, and it's not all about him trying to get her back, and they don't have sexual tension anymore, and they both know they were bad for each other---wowwwwwww.) There's even a brave and beautiful trans character!!! It's well-written, and the plot is interesting and compelling---I couldn't put it down. These all make it stand out in the YA genre, or in any other.

But at the end of the day, I can't get past the fact that I don't like vampires. Nothing about immortality, ethereal beauty, or romanticized and sexualized death appeals to me at all. I couldn't put this book down, but I was also very frustrated by it the entire time I was reading it. And I think, in the end, I couldn't connect with some of Tana's decisions because I don't share her fascination with vampires and Coldtown. I would have run screaming the other direction after about the first fifteen pages, not bitten my tongue and had torrid makeouts with an unbalanced 300 year old hit man as dawn broke above us. Ew. I spent most of the book mentally screaming "HIV epidemic!!" on the verge of tearing my hair out. Did HIV drop out of consideration because Cold will generally kill you a lot faster? It would have been nice to have that addressed, even as an aside.

tl;dr: This is a great book, seriously. But if you aren't into vampires, this isn't going to be the one that convinces you.