Stacey O'Neale

This review was completed by Camille Morales, staff reviewer with the YA Fantasy Guide.Cold Kiss is about a girl named Wren, whose boyfriend died in a car accident the past July. She was heartbroken and sad, so she brought him back from the dead. She has powers, her whole family does, but her mother has never told her how to control them. Danny, her boyfriend, isn’t the same as he was before he died. He’s obsessed with her in so many levels, and he depends on her, and he freaks out if she isn’t there with him. No one knows he’s back from the dead, and she keeps him hidden in her neighbor’s basement. I don’t know if her neighbor is alive, though it doesn’t seem likely, because she hasn’t noticed there is an undead teenage boy staying in her basement. So…that’s kind of a thing that makes me wonder.Then, a new guy comes to the picture. His name is Gabriel, and he has powers of his own. He feels Wren’s power, and they feel attracted to each other. But Wren obviously still has feelings for Danny. She knows it’s wrong to keep him ‘alive,’ but she can’t help it. She loves him, but she doesn’t love who he is now. She loved the guy that made her happy and loved her, not the guy that is obsessed with her. So, she needs to make up her mind. She needs to decide whether she will make Danny a dead person again, or if he stays. But…there are so many problems with him staying. And she’s starting to feel something for Gabriel. I really, really liked this book. I stayed up until three in the morning reading it. I just love books that have something you can learn. Even if it’s how to handle with grief or even if it’s how love and grief may seem unbearable…stuff like that. I loved how this book just taught you this. It shows you how far a girl can go to be with the guy she loves, and how she realizes that what is meant to be isn’t supposed to be reversed or altered. The characters were all really awesome. I loved her friends, her mom, her sister, Gabriel, Olivia (Gabriel’s sister) and Danny’s friends. I didn’t like the new Danny, but I think that’s sort of the point. This book was really good. Really good. I definitely recommend it, and I give it a 4.5/5 stars, only because some things (like the thing with the neighbor and how her mom handled some stuff) didn’t really seemed realistic. But maybe the mom thing is because my mom would totally kill me if I did what Wren did. And I totally would, if I were her.