The Coldest Girl in Coldtown Review

I will never be tired of vampire stories. Especially when authors keep finding clever new ways to reinvent the lore as Holly Black does in The Coldest Girl in Coldtown. I’ve been a fan of Holly Black for years and have particularly enjoyed her books on fairy tales and faeries, so I knew my favorite monsters would be in good hands with her. “The Coldest Girl in Coldtown” started out as a short story, which I came across in an anthology several years ago. Though the story hardly did more than briefly sketch out the vampire-infested world that Holly Black created, I remember enjoying it immensely. Well, the full-length novel that grew out of it is even better.

The story begins with Tana waking up after a night of partying to find that all of the other teenagers in the house have been slaughtered by vampires while she slept. Well, all except for her obnoxiously charming ex-boyfriend Aiden, who has been chained up in the bedroom and left to turn Cold—after being bitten by a vampire, he now craves human blood to complete the transformation. Chained across from him is a mysterious vampire named Gavriel, who seems to be harboring some dark secret. Though still reeling from the horrors she’s witnessed, Tana embarks on a wild plan to save them both. Together, their unusual trio—a human, a vampire, and a boy caught in between—set out for Coldtown, the quarantined community where vampires, those who want to be vampires, and those who have been bitten by vampires are kept isolated from the rest of society. But there’s more to Coldtown than just the endless nocturnal party that the livestreams portray on TV.

The thing I love about this book is that it is a vampire romance that critiques the romanticizing of vampires. The story’s central antagonist is Lucien Moreau, the top vampire in Coldtown, whose elegant, Old-World charm and extravagant parties have made him a celebrity even in the outside world. Young kids and teens, including Tana’s sister, are so enraptured by the image Lucien projects that they idealize vampires and may even be tempted to join them. But Tana cannot ignore the ugly side of these creatures. She watched her mother go Cold and become twisted by her need for blood. And Tana saw the carnage left behind by the vampires who attacked her party. She’s determined to make it through without becoming a vampire herself, and to expose the truth about vampires to the rest of the world.

But though Tana sees the ugliness within beautiful vampires like Lucien, she also sees something different in Gavriel that no one else can. Gavriel is a ruthless killer with a dark past that makes even the other vampires fear him. But when Tana finds him chained up beside her friend, she decides that he’s worth rescuing, too. This plot point made me fondly recall one of the first vampire novels I ever read, Companions of the Night by Vivian Vande Velde, which also features a human girl risking her life to rescue a vampire boy she’s never met before. It’s such a fun way to flip the power imbalances that you tend to find in vampire-human romances.

If this review has piqued your interest, you can purchase The Coldest Girl in Coldtown at your local retailer or buy it online and support The Gothic Library in the process by clicking this Bookshop.org affiliate link. Once you’ve read it, be sure to share your thoughts in the comments!