The Coldest Girl in Coldtown by Holly Black

Okay, I admit, I thought vampires were totally over and done with and la de da. But after reading this book, I have to also admit that I thought Holly Black has definitely done her own thing with the vampire genre and has definitely won me over with this book as it's my favourite book coming from her thus far, so in that respect I'm pretty happy that I really enjoyed this book as much as I did because I think many other readers will as well no matter how over we think vampires are.

THE COLDEST GIRL IN COLDTOWN may not have an entirely original world, but what made it creepy and magical had a lot to do with the way it was written and most importantly with its characters, and I think without the interesting characters this story would not have worked out as well as it did. But hey, we're talking about Holly Black here, so of course she knows what she's doing. 

Now in terms of the characters, while we may love some and hated to love some also, but I absolutely loved Tana as a main heroine. In the beginning she was a bit rough around the edges and let certain people influence her now and then, but as the book rushed through fast-paced action and eventually came to a close, she had finally learned from her mistakes and soon became this pretty bad-ass girl which is awesome and I loved her for being the character with faults. It was real and interesting when it comes to her. But another character I just have to, HAVE to mention is the awesome-bad-ass-gorgeous vampire named Gavriel, who completely won my heart over in this book. He is the type of character you know you shouldn't trust at all because he is a mystery all on his own and from the very beginning I thought he was someone to watch very carefully, which I was very right about because he was awesome in the end and I loved him to pieces . . . just gah. I love him. He's dangerous of course, but he and Tana just had this weird connection and yet this great chemistry together, so props to the author for having a guy like Gavriel because he was some delicious eye-candy for me.

Last but not least, in terms of the ending, that was probably the main reason why I'm rating this book down from a five star to a four-and-a-half star rating. So it's not to say that the ending wasn't awesome or anything like that (because it still was so to speak), but rather it was an open 'kind of' ending which I had a problem with. Now while I absolutely love open endings depending on the book that I am reading because you have a choice to think what you will of what will happen to the characters in the future (you know, without the author giving this clean cut fairy-tale ending like some are known to do), but for this particular book . . . I don't know . . . I just kind of expected more . . . more closure I guess in the end. Again, I still liked the ending - don't get me wrong here - because I'm interpreting it myself and hoped for the best for every character, but it would have been nice to get more closure for those characters unless the author is planning a sequel which would be great even though this book is fine on its own.

Overall, I would highly recommend THE COLDEST GIRL IN COLDTOWN, even if you think you're over vampires in the young adult genre because you have seen nothing yet!