The Coldest Girl in Coldtown by Holly Black
Cut out paper vampire bats. Some rights reserved
Tana wakes up the morning after a wild party to find herself in a house filled with bodies. Her friends have been slaughtered by vampires and she finds the only other survivor, her ex-boyfriend Aidan, tied up in a room with a strange boy who knows more than he’s telling. Tana rescues the two of them, but Aidan has been bitten and they all decide to head for Coldtown, one of the walled cities where vampires (and some humans) are imprisoned in order to keep society safe. The problem is that Coldtown is a one-way journey: once you go in, you can’t get out.
Cheers to Holly Black for putting the bite back in YA vampire stories. These vampires don’t sparkle or waste their time attending high school for all eternity (yeah, right). They are actually scary, and there is plenty of gore. I also enjoyed Tana’s strength: she is more likely to rescue a boy in distress than she is to sit back and wait to be saved. A great read for secondary students who like supernatural tales but want something a little darker (and less focused on love triangles) than many other recent offerings.