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419 pages, Paperback
First published September 3, 2013
Stop being stupid, [Tana] told herself, even though it was much too late for that. She’d been a hundred kinds of stupid already.I mean, I can hardly be accused of being excessively judgmental on a character's idiocy when she repeatedly realizes she's being dumb, right? :|
The tan carpet was stiff and black with stripes of dried blood, spattered like a Jackson Pollock canvas. The walls were streaked with it, handprints smearing their dingy beige surfaces. And the bodies. Dozens of bodies. People she’d seen every day since kindergarten, people whom she’d played tag with and cried over and kissed were lying at odd angles, their bodies pale and cold, their eyes staring like rows of dolls in a shop window.Tana is no stranger to vampires. Her mother was bitten and turned Cold before little 10-year old Tana decides it was a good idea to free her crazy mother from her chains in the basement: result, dead mother, scarred-for-life-but-not-much-the-wiser-from-the-experience 17-year old Tana. The corpses were clearly victims of vampires: they all have puncture wounds. There are blood everywhere. Tana herself might have been bitten. What should she do? Call the police? I mean, THERE ARE A TON OF CORPSES. Call her dad? Run away screaming for help? I would understand if she were to run away screaming for help. According to the government:
if you do come into physical contact with a vampire, you are legally obligated to report yourself to the authorities. Do not attempt to wait to see if you’ve become infected. Do not attempt to self-quarantine. Call 911, explain the nature of the attack, and wait for further instructions.What does Tana do?
Tana started giggling, which was bad, she knew, and put her hands over her mouth to smother the sound. It wasn’t okay to laugh in front of dead people. That was like laughing at a funeral.Ok, fine. She laughs. It's ok, hysteria is fine. I can understand that.
He bent helplessly toward her.NO! NO! NO!
She bit her tongue. Bit it hard, the pain chasing through her nerve endings and alchemizing into something close to pleasure. When her mouth opened under his, it was flooded with welling blood.
He groaned at the taste of it, red eyes going wide with surprise and something like fear.
“Allow me to explain how my whole life has prepared me for this moment. I am used to girls screaming, and your screams—your screams will be sweeter than another’s cries of love.”How about you go fuck yourself, Gavriel?
But if you didn't believe in monsters, then how were you going to be able to keep safe from them?Tana lives in a world where vampires are no longer creatures of myths. Only Holly Black can take such a worn out trope and breath fresh life into it.
Even from the beginning, that was the problem. People liked pretty things. People even liked pretty things that wanted to kill and eat them.And, like any good government, the US immediately banished the "new" citizens to concentration camps...well, technically walled cities with a good internet connection. But there is extreme poverty, disease and death for all the humans living inside.
Remember that I’m still a monster. I can listen to you scream and cry and beg and I still won’t let you out.I love the characters in this book. Tana and her little sister had such a realistic give-and-take relationship. Also, the vampire (Gavriel) was such a refreshing twist - he was just the right mixture of moodiness, insanity and danger.
That was the problem with monsters. Sometimes they looked just like everybody else.
"Allow me to explain how my whole life has prepared me for this moment. I am used to girls screaming, and your screams – will be sweeter than another’s cries of love."
Even from the beginning, that was the problem. People liked pretty things. People even liked pretty things that wanted to kill and eat them.
“We all wind up drawn to what we're afraid of, drawn to try to find a way to make ourselves safe from a thing by crawling inside of it, by loving it, by becoming it.”
If she was going to die, she might as well die sarcastic.
“Every hero is the villain of his own story.”
“Even from the beginning, that was the problem. People liked pretty things. People even liked pretty things that wanted to kill and eat them.”
“You are more dangerous than daybreak.”
"If she was going to die, she might as well die sarcastic. She'd seen a lot of old movies, and that was definitely the way to go out."Every time I think I'm done with vampire books, my favorite authors pull me back in with their own twist on this paranormal creature. Unlike The Immortal Rules, which I've seen this book compared to on occasion, The Coldest Girl in Coldtown occurs in a more present-day setting, not years from now when the vampire epidemic has already reduced the human population to nothing. There are five major Coldtowns set up across the US, where vampires and those who have gone cold -- who've been infected by a vampire's bite -- are sent to spend the rest of their days in order to keep the rest of human civilization safe. Humans must also take extra precaution after nightfall because all of the usual vampire stigmas are present in this novel: sunlight is a no-no, holy water and stakes will kill them, and, of course, they vant to suck your blooooood.