This post contains affiliate links you can use to purchase the book. If you buy the book using that link, I will receive a small commission from the sale.
My Review:Title: Cold Kiss
Author: Amy Garvey
Series: Cold Kiss #1
Published by: HarperTeen
Release Date: September 20, 2011
Format: ebook
Pages: 304
Genres: Young Adult, Paranormal, Supernatural
Source: Freading
Find it: Goodreads ✩ Amazon ✩ B&N ✩ Google ✩ Kobo ✩ iBooks ✩ IndieBound ✩ Book Depository
My rating:
Blurb:It was a beautiful, warm summer day, the day Danny died.
Suddenly Wren was alone and shattered. In a heartbroken fury, armed with dark incantations and a secret power, Wren decides that what she wants—what she must do—is to bring Danny back.
But the Danny who returns is just a shell of the boy Wren fell in love with. His touch is icy; his skin, smooth and stiff as marble; his chest, cruelly silent when Wren rests her head against it.
Wren must keep Danny a secret, hiding him away, visiting him at night, while her life slowly unravels around her. Then Gabriel DeMarnes transfers to her school, and Wren realizes that somehow, inexplicably, he can sense the powers that lie within her—and that he knows what she has done. And now Gabriel wants to help make things right.
But Wren alone has to undo what she has wrought—even if it means breaking her heart all over again.
ORIGINAL REVIEW:
5 stars — Heartbreaking. Completely different from many paranormal-ish books I’ve been reading lately. Beautifully written — it jumps around in time a bit, but it’s the first time that I’ve actually enjoyed that in a book and found it appropriate b/c it adds something to the narrative at just the right times. I don’t know what I expected, but this actually wasn’t it. And yet it was a pleasant surprise. Again, heartbreaking but beautiful. Would love to hear more about Wren and where she goes from here, b/c I’m greedy with characters I like….and she wasn’t always easy to like.
This is the first time I won a GoodReads giveaway and it set the bar really high….THANKS!!!
ON REREAD:
4 stars — Wow. I forgot so much of that book. I remembered bare bones, but that was about it. It really isn’t like most YA paranormal books you come across. It starts right in the thick of things. And it’s just heartbreaking.
If you’re expecting a romance, that’s not quite what you get with this book. It’s more about Wren’s journey with grief and mistakes. You get to see glimpses of her love story with Danny. And you get to see possibilities with Gabriel. But that’s really not what the story focuses on in a lot of ways.
Wren was not always easy to like. She’s kind of abrasive…kind of a bitch actually. But it’s not completely offputting for some reason. Maybe because you’re watching her live with a truly horrible decision. I LOVED that the book spends so much time diving into the true real life consequences of allowing grief to overwhelm you, and what it would actually be like if a loved one was brought back from the dead. And it felt realistic — not sunshine and rainbows, but consequences.
I honestly can’t imagine how bummed I must have been when I got to that end, and while it was an end (and not a cliffhanger), it was screaming for more…and when I read it the first time, I didn’t know there would be more. And it could stand on its own, but now I’m kind of excited to see what the next book will bring us. Because I have SO MANY QUESTIONS! It was clearly setting up for the possibility of more, and I just hope that more doesn’t let me down.
All in all, I’m pretty impressed that this book still got to me and impacted me. It’s a relief actually. I really enjoyed the completely different feel of it, how it didn’t fall into normal tropes.
Leave a Reply