3 stars
An annoyingly selfish rich young woman is cursed by a wizard after she rejects his advances (which irritated me because she had every right to) in a particularly selfish and cruel way (which, okay, she could have done it in a much more considerate manner). He curses her that she will be as cold as her heart and followed by death. At first I was not on board much because I didn’t buy that her heart was icy cold, even if she did seem childish and selfish. But I soon got caught up in the implications of the curse: she is always shiveringly cold, everywhere she stays for more than a few minutes starts to develop a snowstorm, and anyone who touches her will be injured by her cold. She’s run out of town, and she struggles to survive on her own in the mountains until she finds a better purpose for her life and her curse. Meanwhile, Death visits her from time to time, trying to entice her to “come with him.” And it was kinda cool, and I did like the eventual romance quite a bit, but it felt sort of uneven, sort of unconvincing at times. Definitely felt like a first novel.
