Author: Maggie Stiefvater
Publisher: Scholastic, Inc (August 1, 2009)
My Rating: ★★★
Description:
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
Let's start out with the good. I enjoyed the unique werewolf mythology in Shiver. Instead of changing at the full moon, the temperature will change humans into werewolves every year until eventually the wolves will never turn back into their human form. The love story is also quite good. Grace practically falls in love with the wolf (Sam) before she even knows he is human. She was abducted by the wolf pack when she was a child, with intentions to be their dinner. However, Sam saves her life by keeping the other wolves at bay. Very exciting way to start a relationship, so at first I was intrigued.
At around the middle of the book I just got really bored. Grace and Sam are just laying around at her house doing nothing and that goes on for way too long. I understand that they are doing it to keep Sam out of the cold and from turning back into a wolf, but I mean they could have at least played Monopoly while they were stuck in her house and it would have been more interesting.
And this is yet another story of a young teenage girl with flaky parents who don't seem to realize that their daughter is keeping a boy in her bedroom every night for weeks.
The end of the book gets quite exciting again even though I had to slog through about 100 pages of irrelevance to reach it. I thought the "cure" was a rather clever solution. Unfortunately, it ended with a cliffhanger, but luckily I do already have Linger on hand, so I imagine I will read it to see what happens. I hope there is more going on in the next installment.
★★★
"And this is yet another story of a young teenage girl with flaky parents who don't seem to realize that their daughter is keeping a boy in her bedroom every night for weeks." - I haven't read this book for precisely this reason. But excellent summary of a ton of YA books currently out there!
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