Cold Kiss by Amy Garavey

When 17 year Wren’s boyfriend Danny dies in a horrific car accident, she uses magic she doesn’t fully understand to bring him back. For Wren, her decision to bring someone back from the dead has its consequences. Danny is a talking zombie with fading memories of who he was, and what he had with Wren. He isn’t the boy Wren fell in love with and is slowly losing all reasoning for being alive.

   “It seemed so right. Danny was mine, I was his, and that wasn’t going to work if he was dead. So I would make him not dead, not anymore. I didn’t think any further than what it would feel like to kiss him again, to wrap my arms around him and bury my head against his shoulder. That was my first mistake. It also turned out to be the biggest.”

When a book moves me to the brink of tears, and I reach for the Kleenex box, I rate the book higher than I normally would do otherwise. Wren’s character is pretty vulnerable to the point of having fits of rage and bouts of crying. She also tends to ignore her friends who just want things to go back to the way they were before Danny’s unfortunate demise. She also appears to be one of the strongest witches in her family, even stronger than her mother, and Aunt, yet still wonders why her father took off 10 years ago without staying in contact.

The second part of the story is about Wren's magic and the mysteries surrounding it. The rest of her family like her mother, sister, grandmother, and Aunt are similarly gifted with magical abilities. I was a bit surprised that Wren didn’t try to reveal what happened with Danny to her aunt or mother in order to get some help fixing her problem. Instead, she relied on someone from the outside who really offered her no real solutions to her problems other than to tell her about the full moon and reversing her spell.

The third part is discovering that yes, life does move on even after a devastating loss to the person you loved the most. Gabriel is an interesting character, yet he also annoyed me with his intrusive nature of not letting Wren figure things out. Yet, you couldn’t help feel your heart strings break just a little bit when he comes out and says…

   "I saw you, Wren," Gabriel says, and his voice is so soft, a feather drifting on the air, that I close my eyes to listen. "I saw this girl with these dark eyes and this crazy hair and this fuck you look on her face, and I wanted to talk to you."

So, it was obvious as the nose on my face that Garvey would write an ending like she did with Wren and Gabriel walking off hand and hand.

   "He's across the street, leaning against a mailbox, a paper cup from the mini-mart in one hand. He doesn't wave, he doesn't smile, and he doesn't walk toward me. He waits. And I think that this is what I would like love to be. Leaving room for each other, knowing that not every step is going to be side by side. Giving more than taking. Waiting. Trusting." p 292

Although this book clearly is capable of standing on its own, there appears to be a sequel called Glass Heart that is scheduled for release September 18, 2012.