Title: Shiver
Author: Maggie Stiefvater
Ideal Age Range: Young Adult
Mass Market Paperback: 390
Copyright Date: 2009
Blurb: the cold. Grace has spent years watching the wolves in the woods behind her house. One yellow-eyed wolf-her wolf-watches back. He feels deeply familiar to her, but she doesn’t know why.
the heat. Sam has lived two lives. As a wolf, he keeps the silent company of the girl he loves. And then, for a short time each year, he is human, never daring to talk to Grace…until now.
the shiver. For Grace and Sam, love has always been kept at a distance. But once it’s spoken, it cannot be denied. Sam must fight to stay human-and Grace must fight to keep him-even if it means taking on the scars of the past, the fragility of the present, and the impossibility of the future.
My Rating:(★★★) I reserved Shiver from the library just last week, and I blame the pregnancy on my inability to concentrate for long periods of time which deters me from finishing a book in a decent spell. Most of the time I trail off as I’m reading, and then I realize that I just skimmed over a whole page while I was thinking of what color on what wall in the baby’s room I want to paint, then I have to re-read it.
It’s not a dissatisfaction of the book in any way; it’s just my pregnancy affected brain rebelling against the book lover, the werewolf lover and the young adult novel lover in me. Shiver reminded me of why I like living in Minnesota, since it is set in my home state, albeit a lot farther north than the Twin Cities that is my home, closer to the country line between the United States and Canada.
There is one scene in which she describes a golden wood that brought me back to my youth, when I would go out before school, tack up my little red mare and go riding in the back forty while the sun burned the dew off of the tall grass that inhabited our land. It made me want to go take a nature walk so that I could enjoy the untamed nature that does lay just outside our back steps if we only embrace it, or at the most, go for a short drive to enjoy it.
I thought that the blue ink was interesting, I’m not sure why this is something that I am choosing to comment on, but it’s something that I noticed about the book right away. It made the pages colder. While you are reading at the beginning of each chapter, what degree of temperature it is outside, you can just imagine the words chilling on the page.
After getting over the novelty of blue ink on a novel, I was left with a feeling of slight let down at the end of the book. It’s guilty of those terrible cliff hangers like at the end of season of your favorite television show, and yet I’m happy that there is a second book to read, and I will be picking up Linger in a few days or weeks. Depends on what I feel like reading next.
The characters were not your typical teenage semblance, as both of the main characters were independent individuals who were used to taking care of themselves. For very different reasons, of course, and maybe in this day and age with both parents most of the time working out of the house, most kids will relate to these characters.
While I didn’t love this book above all others, I will say I didn’t find anything that I really disliked about it. I rated it at “I liked it” because while I do enjoy the take on the werewolves, I felt that the ending was a tad bit anticlimactic, but I did enjoy 95% of the prose. I will read the rest of the series and probably like them just as much, maybe better.
Quotes: "Baby bunnies." She narrowed her eyes, so I grinned and said, "Adult bunnies, too. I'm an equal-opportunity bunny-eater."
Similar Titles: Twilight by Stephanie Meyer, Wounded by Stephen Cole
What I’m Reading Next: Honestly, I’m not sure yet. I have a few to choose from, Shatterglass by Tamora Pierce, Inkheart by Cornelia Funke, and Duchess by Night by Eloisa James.
☆«·´`·.¸★☆★¸.·´`·»☆
My Rating System:
★ = didn’t like it
★★ = it was ok
★★★ = liked it
★★★★ = really liked it
★★★★★ = it was amazing
© demureconnoisseur/ Stacy Grey
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