Review: Cold Kiss by Amy Garvey

From Goodreads: When her boyfriend, Danny, is killed in a car accident, Wren can’t imagine living without him. Wild with grief, she uses the untamed powers she’s inherited to bring him back. But the Danny who returns is just a shell of the boy she once loved. Wren has spent four months keeping Danny hidden, while her life slowly unravels around her. Then Gabriel DeMarnes transfers to her school and somehow, inexplicably, he can sense her secret. Wren finds herself drawn to Gabriel, who is so much more alive than the ghost of the boy she loved. But Wren can’t turn her back on Danny or the choice she made for him - and she realizes she must find a way to make things right, even if it means breaking her own heart. 

My Rating: 3 hearts 

Thoughts on the Novel: Cold Kiss by Amy Garvey is a standalone book that I thought was on the lighter side of paranormal. If it wasn’t for the fact that Garvey made Wren a witch who uses her powers to bring her boyfriend back from the dead, Cold Kiss might have been a contemporary novel about a girl dealing with issues like love and grief. 

Wren, the protagonist, is a character whose actions are easy to understand. When Danny dies, she chooses to resurrect him, only thinking of how much she misses him and how good it would be to have him back. I liked that when Wren slowly realizes that the Danny she brings back isn’t the same, she is willing to accept her mistake and figure out how to let Danny go once and for all.

While I liked the (living) Danny that I read about from Wren’s flashbacks, I thought Danny the zombie was relatively boring. He was really clingy in the first part of the book, and in the second part, whenever he appeared to have trouble controlling his temper, Wren would make him fall asleep.

Of course there’s a love triangle because our living narrator needs a guy who is alive to be interested in her too. That role goes to Gabriel, someone I would have liked better had he no abilities of his own. To me, it felt like he was only present in Cold Kiss so that Wren had somebody to lean on since she refused to tell her mother what she did or ask for her help. Speaking of Wren’s mother, she barely pried into Wren’s business even though Wren was sneaking out at night and looked like she was falling apart. 

Cold Kiss was released by HarperTeen on September 20, 2011. 

Comments About the Cover: With the focus on the lips and the use of colours that remind me of winter and its chill, I think the picture on the cover represents the title pretty well. 

In exchange for an honest review, this ARC was received from the publisher (HarperCollins) for free via NetGalley.