Thank you NetGalley for providing me with an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

An odd, quiet little mystery that takes its time despite its short length. I was intrigued by the atmosphere and the ghost-narrator aspect, but found myself drifting occasionally. I would recommend this if you’re looking for a mystery novel that’s right in between a cozy mystery and a full-blown suspense/thriller novel. Haunting and tinged with a bit of bloody violence, but probably won’t keep you up at night.

TWs: homophobia, murder

Cold is an intriguing middle grade novel that draws you in from the very first line.

Although Cold has a wonderful synopsis, I have not had a great track record with enjoying middle grade novels. I often find that I just don't gel with the writing style but this one was different. Cold offers a phenomenal story about a boy who has died but cannot move on from the physical world. He is somewhat aware of what happened to him so he just ends up following these detectives around as they search for the truth. It is quite a nice journey as we get insight into Todd's world as well as learn about the world around him, including how other boys at his school treated him because he was queer.

Another intriguing factor of this novel is the dual perspectives. We are following Todd as he helps search for the truth of what happened to him, but we also get to follow Georgia. She is a queer girl just trying to make it in high school who just happens to be connected to Todd without realizing it. This story was told so beautifully and was some of the best middle grade writing I have ever read.

Overall, if you are looking for a book that might help you understand your sexuality as a young person or if you are just looking for a quick read with a very intriguing story, I highly recommend you pick up Cold by Mariko Tamaki.

I’m not sure how I feel about this one still. I liked it while I was reading it but I found it very forgettable. I did really like the characters and the story line.

WOW. I was feeling kind of meh about this because reading a book about a murdered gay kid isn't the best cup of tea but damn, it really picked up. The story is told via 2POVs, Todd's (the ghost of the murdered kid) and Georgia's, also a queer kid who just happens to live in the same area. Georgia's POV took me a second to get into because I'm kind of over HS drama but she grew on me and by the end it had me blood pumping and mouth open. I gave it 4.75 on SG and 5 on GRs.

This is a good ghost story about homophobic hate. Todd and Georgia both have a distant tone in their narration.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for giving me a free advanced copy of this book to read and enjoy.

Todd Mayer’s body is found naked, in the snow, just outside of a playground. Todd’s ghost watches with a certain detached fascination as the detectives dig into his death. He remembers dying to be a horrible experience, full of confusion and icy coldness. He remembers being left.

Georgia and Todd didn’t run in the same circles—seeing as he went to the all-boy Albright Academy and she attends an all-girls school. Yet she still feels a connection, as if she’s met him before. But maybe it’s just because her brother attends the same school, or perhaps because they’re both queer, or maybe it’s just the camaraderie of feeling like an outcast.

Whatever the connection is, Georgia follows Todd’s story almost as closely as Todd follows the investigators trying to piece together that same story.

Cold by Mariko Tamaki is a fast-paced, intriguing look into two teenager’s lives (and deaths). Told in alternating point of views, the reader first gets Georgia’s keen observations of life, the town in which she lives, and the swirling intricacies of the relationships around her. And right behind her is the after-life narration of Todd Mayer himself, who follows the investigators trying to hunt down his killer. But this story less about who did the deed and more about the characters coming to terms with themselves.

I’m a big fan of ghosts narrating their own murders. The Lovely Bones comes to mind. There’s something about that perspective that adds an interesting layer to the murder/mystery scenario.

Todd Mayer is a particularly interesting ghost. Tamaki doesn’t delve into the hows or whys of his particular afterlife. It feels like a dream sequence. Though Todd has certain insights—for example, he understands towards the end that it’s his last day as a ghost. But he doesn’t know what happens after.

Bit by bit, the detectives—Greevy and Daniels—drag the hidden pieces of Todd’s life out from their secret places. Todd remembers the night he died section by section.

You don’t think about death, like that, when you’re alive. You think about surviving. And Todd was sure that everything he had done, everything he was, was helping him survive high school.



Except for that one thing. One mistake.



The last night of his life, when he walked out of his front door at 8:00p.m.



Todd tried to remember what his mother looked like, tucking into the couch with her bag of pistachios to watch her favorite show about small-town crime.



“It’s freezing,” she said. “Take your mittens.”



Todd walked out the front door. At the end of the stone walk, he stopped. He knew his mom watched him from the window. It was snowing lightly. Todd held up his pink mittens for her to see. Mittens he made himself, which he kept hidden in his coat pockets when he was at school. Then he turned left and walked down the sidewalk toward the bus stop.

Meanwhile, the curious Georgia is intrigued by her peer’s death—and like everyone else, wants to know for sure what happened. She adds his death to the pile of other things she is concerned and curious about. The mean girl dynamic at school, her own attraction toward her best friend, her mother’s incessant observation into her life, and her brother’s weird behavior.



Not only does her brother, Mark, seem stressed about all the activity happening at the Albright Academy, but he lies about knowing Todd Mayer. While this strikes Georgia as strange, there a million reasons to deny knowing a murder victim—no one wants to be accused of anything—but there are fewer reasons to hide a big bag of money in your bedroom. When Mark flakes on his laundry chores, Georgia takes up the slack:

Grabbing the laundry basket, I notice Mark’s schoolbooks are stacked up on his desk with a bunch of papers next to a stack of thick envelopes from different colleges, which started arriving last year. On top of the books is a take-out bag that says Mac’s Burgers in bright red neon-style lettering….



My eyeballs graze over exercise bands, a stack of protein bars, resting on the Mac’s Burgers bag, perched on top of Social Movements in American History.



The bag is weird for two reasons. One, it’s weird because Mark is so super paranoid about what he eats. He ONLY eats like such specific stuff when he’s training and he’s always training.



Two, it’s not greasy which is what it would be if you had a big juicy Mac Burger in it or a large or even a small fries. I know this as someone who has left French fry boats in her pockets and in other places and so has many things that smell like grease in her closet and on her floor.



And it’s not crinkly, like how a bag would be if you put fries in it then grabbed it by the top. Instead it looks like it’s been folded in half and folded again. Like…



I step over to the desk, unfold the top of the bag, look inside and see…money. Lots of money.

It turns out the teenagers of this small town have many secrets. Todd’s detectives have their hands full trying to sort out what is related to his death and what other things may be going on beneath the surface. And Georgia—a young girl who never even met Todd—may be holding the key to at least one mystery.

Cold is an intriguing and quick read from Mariko Tamaki, who gives these teens real life and depth in a dark situation. No motive here is shallow. These students are struggling with coming to terms with themselves while facing the worst that humans can do to each other.

Thank you to Netgalley, the author, and the Fiercereads team for this e-arc to read and review.

Cold by Mariko Tamaki is a young adult mystery following the perspectives of Todd Mayer, the ghost of a teen that was recently found dead, and Georgia, another teen that has decided to start her own investigation and find out what happened to Todd. Along the way, there are more connections between Georgia and Todd than she realized. That premise is intriguing and was what really drew me into the story however, the execution of it did not keep me interested. For starters, I did not understand what Georgia’s motivations were to investigate. She really had no connections to Todd (that we knew of.) Then when the investigation started, she really wasn’t investigating. She was living her life like normal, picking up on some suspicious behaviors, and the mystery was told to you. The last 20% went really quickly where all of the remaining information was thrown at the reader, again told not solved. It felt like more of the investigation was done on Todd’s end who really wasn’t looking, it was like he just happened to overhear conversations and remember the last few days before his death. I don’t think the shorter length of this book worked in its favor. If there were another 50-100 pages, it would have helped the pacing of the story and allowed for more character development.

The title of this book is Cold. I think this word, this title, works really well for the book for multiple reasons. For starters, the book takes place in the winter the main character that is found dead is cold. As you know, dead bodies are cold to the touch as cold as ice. if I remember correctly, he froze to death or parts of him was frozen after his death. Some chapters are told in his perspective, and they do feel a bit cold as you would assume and feel reading from a ghost perspective. The story itself feels a bit cold, in terms of feeling detached and disconnected from the characters while reading. Even though I wanted Georgia to continue the investigation and find out the truth, I wasn’t necessarily rooting for her or holding my breath in fear, suspense, or concern for what could happen next. Despite the story and murder investigation being centered around Todd, I felt like I didn’t learn many details about him. It was like watching a documentary about his murder where I may feel sympathy, anger, etc about the case but no real connection to him. There could have been some commentary on how this boy died and no one is effected or seems to care, how cold and cruel people were to him before and after his passing but that didn’t really happen.

There was a sex scene between two characters that lost me. Not only did it feel out of the blue but it felt wrong. Both characters and been drinking, one talked about how drunk she is, one cried, and neither really seemed happy to have been intimate.

Some of this I noticed has been mentioned in other reviews and I feel conflicted about it. This could have been intentional writing on the author’s part and if so, it was good I would give it a higher rating. But if it wasn’t, instead being a book where it fell flat for me and I lost interest since I like more of character/emotional driven story, then I’d rate this lower. Overall, Cold had an intriguing premise but I felt it was lacking in some aspects, 3 stars.

A quick read with some poignant bits but the story fell short of the promised ghost story and left me disappointed. I didn’t care for Georgia as a character, finding her annoying. Her and Todd don’t interact much, with the book being only just over 200 pages. I would have liked so many things to be expanded upon. The writing was compelling and enjoyable, as were many of the characters. But to have Georgia be so annoying, when her POG comprises a majority of the book, just brought down my opinion of the book.

I received this egalley as part of the ALAN conference and it is kept on a kindle in my classroom. My rating is based on the ratings provided by my students who have read the book and I look forward to when I get the chance to do so.

The plot of this was good and solid. I think that kids at the library who already enjoy reading mystery, would also enjoy this one. As an adult reader, I thought it was alright. I felt the characters were a little bland and undeveloped.

I really enjoyed the writing of this book. I also loved the snowy setting. This story was told in two perspectives, one of them being the boy that was dead, and I thought that added so much to the story. Usually in books you get the perspective of people that are still alive. I thought the perspective of the dead boy added another layer to this story. There were a few moments while reading that I lost my interest. Overall, I enjoyed reading this, but it wasn’t anything very memorable to me.

Hello Again!

I first learned about this book a few months before it was published, I remember seeing it online and clicking the pre-order button as I read previously read some of Mariko Tamaki’s works and really enjoyed them, so I was excited to see what this newest work held. I did not read too many summaries or early reviews and I had no idea going into this read if it would be a graphic novel or a novel until it arrived at my door. When I got my copy, I was so excited, that I opened the box and flipped through the book, quickly learning that it is a short novel. I decided to put it into my next nightstand stack and I actually ended up being able to get the Libby audiobook copy about a week ago so I decided it was more than time to dive in!

SPOILERS AHEAD

Georgia can not stop thinking about what happened to Todd or what might have happened. Recently Todd’s body was found in the local park, Todd went to school with her brother and the whole town is reeling that this could happen. Georgia can not help the feeling that she has seen Todd somewhere, but where? Her brother claims not to know him so he would not have come to her house before but is that the truth? While Georgia is trying to figure out where and why she has seen Todd before, his ghost is looming around town, following his last moments of life around, retracing his steps to learn exactly what happened himself.

I really enjoyed this story. It was a fast read and I could not put down the audiobook (I finished it in less than a day). The split perspectives between Georgia and Todd were incredibly interesting and I kept trying to put the pieces together for myself. Each of the character’s different stories and perspectives eventually came together to form a full picture of what happened to Todd and I have to say I did not guess the ending of this story at all. On a final note, I really love the cover for this book. It was made with an illustrated style, the title sticking out with a bold purple font. Let me know in the comments if you have picked up any of Mariko’s works!

Goodreads Rating: 4 Stars

I thought this book was very cleverly written, a modern day who done-it, with a great twist at the end. Highly recommend to all mystery fans!

Cold is not what I expected, but certainly a page-turner with a satisfying ending. I read it entirely in one sitting.

I thought that I would like this a lot more than I did, because I've loved Mariko Tamaki's other works. Part of that is certainly my own fault for not expecting such a dark storyline and not reading the description thoroughly. Part of that is the fault of the book's pacing, which felt slower than I would have preferred. There are obviously a lot of pieces to murder mysteries, especially ones with somewhat omniscient narrators like in this book. The tone and writing style reminded me a little of The Lovely Bones, since we got to hear from the victim as his death was investigated, but I wish that his narration had felt more involved rather than detached.

If I'm being honest, I wasn't quite such about this book at first but I actually ended up liking it. Usually, I consider myself a harsh reviewer but alright. I really liked the concept of this book but I found it difficult to connect to the characters.

This book was only fine for me. It's not something I'd actively recommend or even buy for my classroom library. While the story concept seems interesting, I didn't connect with any of the characters--they all felt like archetypes and didn't have anything that made them jump off the page. And the reveal of the mystery of what happened felt clumsily put together and rushed. It's not a bad book, just not particularly well executed, unfortunately.

This was such an amazing, sad story. It just shows how disposable some people think life is. I loved the relationship Todd had with his teacher even though that brought the teacher under suspicion when Todd ended up dead. The book is very short so if you are looking for a mystery with an LGBTQ+ twist then give this one a go.

Reading this book in the middle of an unseasonably hot May made for a weird experience but I'm so glad I was finally able to tackle it! Cold is a harrowing look at how the choices we make can have devastating consequences on our lives and the lives of those around you. Tamaki never fails to knock me on my ass emotionally and even though from the second chapter we know what Todd's fate is, the slow unraveling of the night of his murder is a complete gut punch.

CW: murder of a teen, depictions of death, grief, loss of a child, homophobia, bullying