THE COLDEST GIRL IN COLDTOWN by Holly Black is a dystopian young adult novel like no other.  It's pages are filled with vampires, violence, and other common themes seen in young adult dystopia, but the cliche concepts are executed in such an original way.  

CONTRAST & CONTRADICTION: While Black's vampires are nowhere near the diluted "vegetarian" vampires of the popular Twilight series, she does depict them as showing some human emotion.  Tana, the main character, has been raised to believe that vampires are emotionless, incorrigible monsters, but begins to doubt these teachings once she meets and is saved by a loquacious vampire named Gavriel. 

MEMORY MOMENT:  The novel is written in chapters that alternate between the present and the past.  The past chapters explore various important moments from multiple characters' pasts, the most important being the day when Tana was attacked by her mother, who had been infected with the vampire malady.  The moment is referenced many times throughout the book, and it holds strong importance to Tana. 

TOUGH QUESTIONS: Probably the toughest question that Tana had to ask herself occurred when she discovered that one of the vampires had nearly bitten into her leg, and left behind a scratch.  She immediately knew that it made her susceptible to the possibility of becoming a vampire.  Tana, who was traveling with a vampire and an infected, spent a long time deciding whether she should enter a Coldtown, or risk staying on the outside, while the Cold potentially gestated inside of her.  She also worried about reneging on her promise to always be around for her younger sister, who would be left alone if Tana left, but could be put in danger if Tana stayed.

AGAIN AND AGAIN:  Every chapter begins with a famous quote, all of which have to do with death, and the idea of dying being a sweet escape from life.  This is a theme that is constant in THE COLDEST GIRL IN COLDTOWN.  Humans flock to the Coldtowns, intent on being turned in the hopes of staying young and beautiful forever, or earning fame and fortune, or simply just escaping from their dreary, terror-filled lives.  Inside the Coldtowns, parties rage constantly, and vampires live afterlives of leisure, as opposed to the lives humans live in the destroyed world life behind by the apocalypse.  In Black's world, death truly is the light at the end of the tunnel.  

In all honesty, I don't think I've ever breezed through any series as fast as I did with THE SELECTION.  It was kind of surprising, too, because this fluffy, girly trilogy was so unlike the books I usually read.  Yes, it was set in a futuristic, post-war world, but a majority of the series played out in a palace, and yes, there was a rebellion, but we were only fed little glimpses of it.  Overall, THE SELECTION was filled with frilly dresses and drama queens and a charming prince.  And I loved it.

Maybe this was all just a welcome change from the more serious, dark, gruesome novels I'd been mulling through before it.  After reading BLUE LILY, LILY BLUE (arguably my new favorite book of all time), I was a little stuck with what to read next.  I kept trying to find something so fantastically amazing that it would live up to BL,LB in every way, but really just came up empty.  

I had downloaded THE SELECTION on my nook a few months ago, but had never gotten around to reading it--I honestly think it may have been just the cover that appealed to me.  I finally picked it up while sitting in the car for two days on the way home from Florida, and I just could not stop reading.  

Nothing about THE SELECTION is particularly deep.  There's no incredible meaning behind it.  The characters could be dull and the King was an ass and I felt the whole rebellion part to it kind of fell flat.  But oh my god, the drama.  I absolutely devoured it.  

THE SELECTION is what you get when you throw thirty-ish teenage girls in a room together, and tell them that one of them will get to marry a prince, and in turn become rich beyond belief.  It seems, at face value, like such a silly concept, but it made perfect sense in Cass's world.  The lower classes (and even the upper middle classes) are incredibly deprived.  They are forced to work in a profession based on what their ancestors were doing at the time the castes were imposed.  The main character, America, is a 5 (on a scale of 1 to 8, Ones being the royal family), and her life is greatly impacted by her caste. 

I began THE SELECTION liking America a great deal.  I understood her reasons for originally not wanting to sign up for the Selection, though I found her relationship with Aspen a bit vapid.  She had this inalienable quality to her that made her a very stubborn person, and I quite like stubborn people.  And I was fully with her when she did decide to enter the Selection.

And for the majority of the first book, I loved her.  I loved how she was so iffy about everything that was thrust upon her in a castle.  I loved how real and blunt she was with Maxon, despite him being the prince.  I loved that she quickly made friends, and quickly began to root for certain girls to win.  But then Aspen came along and ruined it all.

I knew he was going to make a comeback, because I knew that the book would result in a love triangle.  But dear lord was I upset when he finally showed up.  Things were going so wonderfully with Maxon--I could truly see that America was happy, and I think America was beginning to see it as well.  She was the type of girl that I though should become the Queen.  But the moment Aspen showed up, America kind of dropped all her good qualities.  

It was in THE ELITE that she dissolved into a whiny, dramatic, flimsy character.  I felt like their relationship, which had supposedly been gestating for years, was nothing more than a lust-filled summer fling.  She said that she loves Aspen, she says that he's her rock, that he's always there for her, except for when he wasn't, when he brutally dumped her out of nowhere.  Meanwhile, she's also dating Maxon, and is slowly but surely gaining feelings for him, which she effectively pushes out of the way the second she meets with Aspen.  Which, by the way, could get both of them killed.  

Even when America begins to pull away from Aspen, he still holds on to her.  He stills wants her, he still wants to risk it all.  He becomes and angry, petulant child whenever she talks about Maxon.  I felt like he was so selfish, to stand there and tell her he loved her and needed her but not think of her feelings or the fact that she could be killed for having a relationship with someone other than the prince.

Once I got a few chapters into THE ONE however, things began to look up.  America lost her whiny attitude, and she finally began to realize that she definitely wanted Maxon.  The problem became less of a choice between Maxon and Aspen, and more of an internal battle over whether she could become a princess.  All in all, I loved America's stubbornness about the politics in this novel.  It was in this novel that the rebels fully became a part of the plot.  America's newfound knowledge of the rebellion seemed to give her the push she needed to truly address the issues she wanted taken care of.  Even faced with the iniquity of the King, America remained determined.  She gained the support of the public, and of the rebels, and I felt as though that delivered a much-needed push to show her that she could truly be a Queen.

Finally, I truly believe that I am satisfied with the ending of the series.  I did feel like the rebels were just squashed in there, messily written in in order to steer at least some attention away from the popularity contest that was the entire plot, but they did make for a wonderful climax.  Cass managed to kill all the characters I wanted dead (albeit while killing some of my favorites), and Maxon and America's relationship was wrapped up in such a wonderful way.  The novel's cessation was extremely satisfying, and although some things worked out a little to perfectly, that was honestly fine with me.  I needed something light and fluffy, and that what I got with THE SELECTION.

                                              THE COLDEST GIRL IN COLDTOWN by HOLLY BLACK

THE COLDEST GIRL IN COLDTOWN is, at first glance, a very generic young adult novel.  It has the vampires, the dystopia, the "strong" female lead--all of which have become reoccurring themes in young adult novels, and have, in effect, begun to run dry.

But THE COLDEST GIRL IN COLDTOWN is anything but dry.  It takes generic concepts and transforms them into something incredible.  Everything that I was skeptical of at the book's exposition hasn't been a problem.  The vampires don't sparkle, the dystopia is rich and believable, there's no insta-love!  And the main character... oh my god.

Tana is one of the most kick-ass heroines I've read in a long time.  Her life has been deracinated, yet she remains sarcastic, smart, and unafraid of all the monsters that hide in the shadows of the world she lives in, despite having every reason to fear everything.  It's refreshing, reading from the point of view of someone who dives into danger with no consternation, and it offers a great view of the darkest side of the current apocalypse.  Also, Tana's lack of fear isn't fueled by a need for an adrenaline rush or from just plain stupidity.  It comes from her wanting to do the right thing.  Everything she goes through, she goes through to protect her family from the monster that she believes she may become.

At page 180, Tana has just entered her Coldtown, and will soon be experiencing life in the cloistered vampire city.  I'm excited to see her face the intractable infecteds, and for the unbridled flood of gore and suspense that other readers have promised lies in wait.

In The Shawshank Redemption, Andy Dufresne embarks on a “hero’s journey” after being thrown in jail for his allegedly killing his wife and her lover.  Throughout this journey, Andy was depicted as being a “Christ-figure”, in that his struggles and motives were similar to those of Jesus in the Christian bible.  I found it almost surprising how much Andy’s character is a temporal figure, as he is this downtrodden, falsely accused man, who, at surface level, appeared very different from Jesus. 

Right off the bat, Andy is falsely convicted of a crime (murder), as was Jesus.  He was thrust into the malign world of prison, which immediately forced strict precepts upon him.  Andy, instead of succumbing to a life behind bars, still continues his life.  He uses his past job as a banker in order to help those that worked for the prison, and became persistent about expanding the library, writing letters weakly despite the Infinitesimal chance of response.  Andy hoped to impart knowledge and encourage his inmates with the growth of the library, just as Jesus taught his apostles.

Finally, most everyone knows that Jesus died and returned to life.  In a way, I believe that Andy did as well.  His symbolic “death” occurred when he dragged himself through figurative hell in the sewers in order to escape the prison.  Mexico almost seems like a heaven for Andy, as it is the place he had been aiming to end up in for the entirety of his life in prison.  Andy’s plan of escape, even in its incipience, was to find himself in a sort of personal heaven.    Additionally, he leads Red to Mexico with him, similar to how Jesus guided his followers to heaven.

1. Intractable - hard to control or deal with
2. Cessation - the fact or process of ending or being brought to an end
3. Malady - a disease or ailment
4. Malign - evil in nature or effect
5. Dictum - a formal pronouncement from an authoritative source; a short statement that expresses a general truth or principle
6. Infinitesimal - an indefinitely small quantity; a value approaching zero; incredibly small
7. Retinue - a group of advisers, assistants, or others accompanying animportant person.
8. Unbridled - uncontrolled; unconstrained
9. Incipient - in an initial stage; beginning to happen or develop
10. Renege - go back on a promise, undertaking, or contract
11. Consternation - feelings of anxiety or dismay, typically at something unexpected
12. Inalienable - unable to be taken away from or given away by the possessor
13. Petulant - (of a person or their manner) childishly sulky or bad-tempered
14. Temporal - relating to worldly as opposed to spiritual affairs; secular; of or relating to time
15. Cloister - seclude or shut up in
16. Gestation - the development of something over aperiod of time
17. Loquacious - tending to talk a great deal; talkative.
18. Consign - deliver (something) to a person's custody, typically in order for it to be sold
19. Iniquity - lack of fairness or justice
20. Penchant - a strong or habitual liking for something or tendency to do something 
21. Variegated - exhibiting different colors, esp. as irregular patches or streaks
22. Convalescent - recovering from an illness or operation
23. Curio - a rare, unusual, or intriguing object. 
24. Precept - a general rule intended to regulate behavior or thought
25. Gratuitous - uncalled for; lacking good reason; unwarranted
26. Incorrigible - (of a person or their tendencies) not able to be corrected,improved, or reformed
27. Confluence - an act or process of merging
28. Neophyte - a beginner; a novice or new convert
29. Eidetic - relating to or denoting mental images having unusual vividnessand detail, as if actually visible.
30. Minacious - menacing; threatening.
31. Cerated - covered with wax or resin
32. Opacify - make or become opaque.
33. Tincture - a slight trace of something
34. Deracinate - tear (something) up by the roots.
35. Derecho - a line of intense, widespread, and fast-moving windstorms and sometimes thunderstorms that moves across a great distance and is characterized by damaging winds.
36. Carafe - an open-topped glass flask typically used for serving wine or water.
37. Carambola - a golden-yellow juicy fruit with a star-shaped cross section. Also called star fruit.
38. Treatise - a written work dealing formally and systematically with a subject
39. Meander - (of a person) wander at random; (of a speaker or text) proceed aimlessly or with little purpose
40. Credence - belief in or acceptance of something as true
41. Dreadnought - a type of battleship introduced in the early 20th century, larger and faster than its predecessors and equipped entirely with large-caliber guns.
42. Stramash - an uproar; a row
43. Imari - a type of richly decorated Japanese porcelain
44. Poteen - alcohol made illicitly, typically from potatoes.
45. Parabiosis - the anatomical joining of two individuals, esp. artificially in physiological research.