This was a book that took me a little bit by surprise. It mixes the believable and unbelievable together in a way that really worked for me. The Ice Queen is about a woman who has a pattern of making wishes that come true. The first sentence of the book drew me in reading, “Be careful what you wish for. I know that for a fact. Wishes are brutal, unforgiving things. They burn your tongue the moment they’re spoken and you can never take them back.”
At a young age, upset with her mother, she (unnamed main character) wishes that her mother would disappear and she does, that day, in a tragic car accident. After that experience she begins to think of herself as needing to be untouchable, keeping everyone at a distance, and taking part in life from behind shields that she builds up herself. She is ice, frozen against the world around her. She eventually moves to live closer to her brother who is a meteorologist in a place that is known for lightning strikes. She again makes a wish, to be struck by lightening, and it happens. She survives this experience but with trauma to her body. She loses her hair, hears a clicking sound in her head, and loses her ability to see the color red.
She takes a step that is unusual for her and joins a group of other lightening strike survivors that are being studied for research purposes. She begins to make tentative connections with others and build relationships. Through this group she learns of a man called “Lazarous Jones” because he came back from the dead after being struck with lightening. He is very reclusive but she becomes interested in him and pursues a relationship with him. He is so full of heat after the strike that he burns the things he touches and his breath lights paper on fire. Lazarous becomes something unexpected and it was an interesting twist.
In the end, the lightening strike seems to bring her back to life after so long protecting herself from any further hurt.
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