Tana lives in a world where walled cities called Coldtowns exist. In them, quarantined monsters and humans mingle in a decadently bloody mix of predator and prey. The only problem is, once you pass through Coldtown’s gates, you can never leave.
One morning, after a perfectly ordinary party, Tana wakes up surrounded by corpses. The only other survivors of this massacre are her exasperatingly endearing ex-boyfriend, infected and on edge, and a mysterious boy burdened with a terrible secret. Shaken and determined, Tana rushes to save the three of them the only way she knows how: by going straight to the heart of Coldtown itself.
Holly Black takes the overused tropes of girls and monsters in a dystopian reality and gives it new life by not following the standard formula for her characters and story themes in the early 2010s. Tana Is the heroine of the story and instead of needing to be saved by the two boys she instead saves them countless times. Even when Tana finds herself in a tough situation she finds a way out of it by herself young with her own willpower, intelligence, and strength to best Countless powerful and bloodthirsty Vampires.
While The world seems to be in a craze about coldtowns, and its vampires, Tana Would much rather live a comfortable life on the east coast beaches with her best friend. While most stories with Female lead characters Are full of unrealistic action sequences and supernatural power to give the main character an edge over her enemies, Tana never needed that. Out of Everyone introduced to Us in the story, Tanna was the only one who had no desire for the power and immortality that came with going cold, nor did she need to. Tana was able to beat multiple vampires with just what she could find lying on the floor and at some points just her bare hands.
While romance is a subplot in the book, it doesn’t completely overtake the main plot or action of the overall story. Tana proves time and time again that while she loves Gavriel She has no need for him. While countless other books follow the same trope Holly Black takes it in a new direction and gives it new light by creating one of the strongest lead characters I have read, and tackling heavy topics such as grief, PTSD, parent death, alcoholism, teenage love and heartbreak, suicide, torture, and survivors guilt while still keeping the book lighthearted and thrilling.
While this book is still meant for a broad audience of Young adults the overall dark themes are very evident and might be quite gruesome and uncomfortable for younger readers. I think as long as you are prepared for a dark story with heavy and dense topics it would be an amazing book to read.
