I’m not usually one to read books week-of-release. Aside from my favorite author, Rainbow Rowell, no author inspires enough confidence in me to not wait it out to see what reviews are like. And I’m not usually one to get in on the ground floor with an author either. I’m just not in-the-know enough for that. This particular exception, Cold by Mariko Tamaki, came on a whim after seeing it listed as one of The Strand’s Book-of-the-Month options. I randomly remembered how awesome that book store is recently and learned, through their website, that they have their own (super pricey) Book of the Month subscription. Since it didn’t seem worth the exorbitant cost for the sub, I used the offerings instead as potential options for me to seek out on my own and was won over enough by the excerpt from this book to pre-order it from Target.
It arrived yesterday and I devoured all but a smidgen (that I read last night) today. Cold is an easy, inoffensive read. Tamaki has a way of putting things in unique, interesting ways throughout the book. But the plot is kinda… lackluster. A 17-year-old boy, Todd, is found dead in the snow and we set out to determine who is the culprit, whilst said boy watches on as a ghost. Every so often, we jump into the perspective of the girl on the cover there, Georgia, a fellow outcast (as Todd had no real friends). Their stories, inevitably, find some overlap and Georgia learns of how her life intersected in some small fashion with Todd’s death. Nothing too surprising about that. I kept hoping it wouldn’t turn out the way it did, the way Tamaki was leaning so hard into, but I unfortunately didn’t get my wish.
Also, it seems like she’s trying a little too hard to add LBGTQIA characters into the mix. Todd was gay, his teacher was gay, one of the two people on Todd’s murder case was gay, and another character has their first gay experience in a rather random, and unfortunate, turn of events. The last one, I could’ve certainly done without. It felt forced, something just to make the two parallel stories find more alike than they already did. And the teacher and the detective felt like more representation simply for the sake of representation, with the teacher also seemingly being gay in large part to frame his friendship with Todd in a more dramatic fashion. Oh, and there are plenty of references to various rooms/apartments being “gay” ones, which made me a bit uncomfortable, her clearly trying to “other” them more still. There’s barely any negative mention of their sexuality by any other characters, though, which I found strange in a book so concerned with their gayness (and with one of those gay characters dying an untimely death). One character has assumptions made about them due primarily to their being gay, but that’s about the extent of it.
So Cold is a rather mixed bag; there’s some nice writing, showing that Tamaki knows how to word-smith… yet the plot and characters are muddled and lacking. If you’re looking for some LGBTQIA young adult fiction, I’m sure you can find plenty of better options; that being said, it’s an okay enough read in spite of all its drawbacks.