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The Coldest Girl in Coldtown | February 3, 2016

by Holly Black (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, September 2013)

A few years after the vampire frenzy struck the publishing industry, I finally got around to reading Holly Black’s The Coldest Girl in Coldtown, and I’m very glad I did! Set in a world where vampire regularly infect humans, the novel follows Tana, a 17-year-old girl who passes out at a party, only to wake up next to her friends’ corpses. The only other survivors are Tana’s newly-infected ex-boyfriend, Aidan, and a mysterious vampire named Gavriel. Tana, Aidan, and Gavriel are left to seek help in Coldtown, a walled quarantine area that keeps the infected away from outer society. Needless to say, chaos ensues.

I’m a big fan of magical realism, and I think that Holly Black is one of the best magical realism writers out there. Despite the fact that Tana is surrounded by vampires, the world of Coldtown feels incredibly real. Black has added the perfect amount of myth and realism to create a spine-tingling story that might make you fear for vampires in real life!

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