Bibliofreakblog

Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater

Spoiler: the guy lives at the end.  But you and I already knew that, considering that the sequel, Linger, is already out.  I actually would have really enjoyed some delicious tragedy where he died and the next book could have been about some of the other werewolves, but this is YAPARANORMALROMANCE and that just isn’t going to happen.  Thus I never felt any sense of urgency whatsoever, which might’ve brought the book up from “meh” to pretty ok.

My Inner Teenaged Self occasionally stopped by to check in on this book, but the most interesting thing she really had to say was “I can’t believe that kids are allowed to have cell phones in school now.”  Neither of us care very much about werewolves, and have little appreciation for anthropomorphized animals.

Also, neither of us was willing to watch the next Twilight movie to compare werewolves.

The plot, in case you don’t know, is that Grace was attacked by wolves as a kid.  But she stared into one wolf’s golden eyes and it magically saved her.  This created a strong bond between wolf and girl and she really wishes the wolf could be her boyfriend.

Then this kid at school (she’s now, like, 16) dies and his body goes missing and then she sees this wolf in the woods that has this kid’s eyes and knows that he must be a werewolf.  Her suspicions are confirmed when her golden-eyed wolf gets shot and turns back into a human on her doorstep.

Sam, the werewolf, was actually interesting to me.  I’d rather have had the story just focus on him.  There was this impending doom, where he knew that once he turned back into a wolf, he’d stay that way forever, because that happens eventually when you are a werewolf, and it was seriously like he had AIDS or something because the time you get switching back and forth varies from person to person.  But if he had AIDS, I think he probably would’ve died at the end.

And, yeah, Sam was a bit emo (he kept composing really really bad song lyrics in his head, made all the worse next to the Rilke he liked to read) but I actually felt like he was a real person.  This is quite a feat in the world of YAPARANORMALROMANCE.  He was shy, like a real boy (boys in real life are not like in the movies, which then make girls be all like, am I don’t something wrong? [this bit added by Inner Teenaged Self]).

The writing, aside from the song lyrics was ok.  Nothing to complain too much about.  Except that if I end up reading the next one, I’m going to have a drinking game where every time they say “shiver” or “linger” I take a shot.  I think it will give me an entirely new perspective on werewolves.
Buy Shiver on Amazon

If you like this book/author, you might like:

(my reviews in blue)

Hush, Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick
Fallen by Lauren Kate
The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke by Rainer Maria Rilke
Beautiful Creatures by Margaret Stohl
The Wheel of Time Series by Robert Jordan
Twilight by Stephanie Myer
13 to Life by Shannon Delaney
Raised by Wolves by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

Other works by Maggie Stiefvater:

Linger
Lament: The Faerie Queen’s Deception
Ballad: A Gathering of Faerie