Main Character: Wren
Love Interest: Gabriel (Highlight to see)
Series: None that I know of
Author: Website|Facebook|Twitter|Goodreads
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.
When I first heard about this book, I was curious to see what the heck Wren was thinking to bring her boyfriend back from the dead and to see how all of that turned out. I was a bit taken back by how short this story was (just under 200 pages) but after all was said and done, I enjoyed the book. I didn’t exactly love the book but it had enjoyable moments.
This book follows Wren as she’s living the after effects of grief. Wren has special powers and when the unthinkable happens, in this book that’s her boyfriend is killed in a car accident, she brings him back to life. Things don’t turn out the way that Wren thought it would when she raised Danny from the dead. She thought that they’d be able to pick up right where they left off before he died but that’s not what happened at all. Wren is confused and she’s scared because she has no idea what to do. She can’t let Danny out of her sight because it’s not like he can go back home with his parents or go back to school because as far as everyone else is concerned, Danny is dead. She can’t tell anyone about what she did because first off, who would believe her and she’s scared of what might happen to Danny and to her if someone were to find out.
She’s all alone in this dilemma and she has no idea what to do until the new boy at school comes around and starts sniffing at her door, telling her cryptic little messages about how “he knows” and confusing the hell out of her. She starts getting closer and closer to Gabriel and with his help, she starts to feel a little better about everything with Danny.
The thing about this book was that Wren is very sorry for what she did and she wants to make it right. While that’s good and dandy, the way that she went about it got on my hot damn nerves and when everything was said and done, I didn’t feel like she was punished enough for it all. Because not only did she raise a dead boy from the grave, she lied about it and she would have kept right on lying about it if Gabriel didn’t come into the picture. She never told her Mom or her Aunt and she could have really used their help.
I couldn’t really get behind Wren as a character because she annoyed the ever living snot out of me. I got that she was strong and that she was stubborn but she took her stubbornness to whole new levels that annoyed me to no end. The way that she kept yelling at Gabriel throughout the book after he would try to help her and be there for her made me want to smack the crap out of her. While we’re on the subject of Gabriel, I didn’t understand why he wanted to help Wren so bad. I didn’t understand why he loved her so much to want to go through everything he went through in this book for her because he didn’t know her very well. It’s not like they’ve been best friends and he’s been in love with her for his entire life. They only knew each other for a matter of weeks before he was bending over backward trying to be there for her, I mean he took in her dead boyfriend’s zombie self and kept him in his room for her.
I just didn’t buy the whole love story between Wren and Gabriel, it felt like too much too soon. I did enjoy the story telling and everything but there were a lot of things that I just didn’t buy. I wanted to enjoy this book a whole lot more than I did but it’s not a bad story, the execution for me just didn’t mesh well with the time frame. I also wish that we got more page time with Wren’s friends, it would have been nice to see more from them.
Overall, the story could have been a lot better but I did enjoy getting to know Gabriel and the storyline was interesting, it just wasn’t a home run for me so this book gets a low C from me.
…and that’s your scoop!
Book cover and blurb credit: http://barnesandnoble.com
Interesting premise. Made me want to go read Pet Sematary again…
I haven’t read Pet Cemetery though I have seen the movies.