The Coldest Girl in Coldtown - Holly Black

Tana wakes up in a bathtub after a night of partying only to find almost everyone massacred in the house.  Besides her the only other people "alive" are her ex-boyfriend Aidan, who is tied to a bed and infected, along with a vampire named Gavriel in chains next to the bed.  As they escape the house with a group of vampires after them, Tana is bitten on her leg.  She fears that she's infected and will turn into a vampire.  They stop at a gas station an hour away from the party massacre to decide what they want to do.  The best thing for everyone is to head to the Coldtown in Springfield, Massachusetts.  The Coldtowns were set up to contain the vampires and people who are infected and may or may not turn into vampires.  At a rest stop outside of Coldtown they encounter Midnight and Winter, a brother and sister who want to become vampires.  Midnight and Winter run a blog about vampires.  Midnight wants to interview Aidan since they've never encountered someone going through the transition into a vampire.  When he attacks her during the interview Tana decides it is time to get going to Coldtown.  As they approach the checkpoint before Coldtown, Gavriel is put into chains to make it look like he is their captive.  Tana fills out the paperwork to get the bounty and a marker for herself so she can leave Coldtown.  All of them enter Coldtown and are put into cages.  They escape and head to a house where Midnight has a contact.  His contact locks Aidan and Tana in a room together where Aidan's hunger for blood is to much for him to control.  He attacks Tana and she escapes.  She encounters Jameson who tells her who Gavriel really is and his connection to Lucien, the most famous vampire in the Springfield Coldtown.  Tana begins to question if bringing Gavriel back to Coldtown was the right thing to do. 

After not reading a vampire book for a while this was the perfect one for me to pick up and read.   It was a well told story with the right mix of a dangerous and serious situation Tana is in, along with some comic relief.  I like the way it ended too.  It was left open for a possibility of a sequel, and for the reader to imagine what might happen.  The book had the feel of episodes of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, which made the book even more enjoyable for me to read. 

T.B. 9/23/13