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A review by gggina13
Cold by Mariko Tamaki
3.0
2.5 stars
Cold unfortunately lives up to its name with a very cold, detached writing style.
We follow Todd Mayer, who is dead, and a ghost, and following around the detectives investigating his likely murder. I kind of think this is just a way to passively get us to see what the investigation side of the story is like, because we don't hear a ton from Todd. He talks about the sensation of being a ghost, more lack thereof, but mostly it's just an info dump about what the detectives learn.
We also follow Georgia, who has basically nothing to do with Todd, doesn't know him at all, but her brother was in the same grade as him at school. Her POV is also one in which we do not get much of a level of depth at all, which really just makes reading this book frustrating because it's not easy to read a sensitive subject matter like teen death in such a detached style. It's definitely a style of writing, and a choice, and I can see how some people would be interested in a more factual story without a big depth of emotion, but I really wanted to know more about how everyone FELT and not just what they DID.
There's not much else to say as there is an investigation into Todd's death that brings things to light over the course of the book. Georgia is biracial, I believe half Japanese? Todd and Georgia are both queer. But like everything in this book, we are mostly told and not shown even that. It's certainly not my favorite YA mystery, and the Lovely Bones comp is quite the stretch, but I think it does have an audience out there, even if it's niche.
Cold unfortunately lives up to its name with a very cold, detached writing style.
We follow Todd Mayer, who is dead, and a ghost, and following around the detectives investigating his likely murder. I kind of think this is just a way to passively get us to see what the investigation side of the story is like, because we don't hear a ton from Todd. He talks about the sensation of being a ghost, more lack thereof, but mostly it's just an info dump about what the detectives learn.
We also follow Georgia, who has basically nothing to do with Todd, doesn't know him at all, but her brother was in the same grade as him at school. Her POV is also one in which we do not get much of a level of depth at all, which really just makes reading this book frustrating because it's not easy to read a sensitive subject matter like teen death in such a detached style. It's definitely a style of writing, and a choice, and I can see how some people would be interested in a more factual story without a big depth of emotion, but I really wanted to know more about how everyone FELT and not just what they DID.
There's not much else to say as there is an investigation into Todd's death that brings things to light over the course of the book. Georgia is biracial, I believe half Japanese? Todd and Georgia are both queer. But like everything in this book, we are mostly told and not shown even that. It's certainly not my favorite YA mystery, and the Lovely Bones comp is quite the stretch, but I think it does have an audience out there, even if it's niche.