Book Review: Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater

Though she was attacked by wolves as a child, 17-year-old Grace has always had a fascination with the creatures that live in the forest behind her house, especially the one with piercing yellow eyes. When a boy at her school is killed by a pack of wolves, the community is outraged and leads a hunting party into the forest. Grace follows them in a blind effort to stop the massacre, only to come across her wolf — shot and transformed into a human. He’s Sam and he’s been turning into a wolf every winter since being bitten as a child. Only, it’s winter now and he’s not sure how much time he’ll have with Grace before changing back, possibly forever.

It’s easy to compare this book to Twilight — normal girl falls into a passionate relationship with supernatural guy who has to protect her against his less-friendly kin. And while I liked it a bit more than Twilight, overall it fell flat for me. I found the alternating first-person narration between Grace and Sam to to be interesting, but mostly confusing. Both characters were one-dimensional and the relationship between them felt forced and developed awfully quickly. Plus, wolf Sam has been obsessively stalking her for years and seen her naked — that’s definitely Edward-level creepy. I also wanted to know more about each character’s relationship with their respective sets of parents — they got talked about a lot without much in the way of explanation or resolution. That said, I liked some of the minor characters. I imagine Grace’s friend Olivia will play a large role in the sequel (Linger, Fall 2010) and I’m curious to learn more about her. Isabel was also amusing and added a nice level of tension to the story. The wolf mythology was unique and compelling — I only wish there was more about it. Of course, the characters themselves don’t know much about it and we don’t have an omniscient narrator to explain everything. There’s lots more for Steifvater to dive into here for the upcoming books, which could actually be more interesting now that the gushy, new love, romance stuff is out of the way. Despite the things I didn’t like about the book, this will definitely appeal to lots of teens and shouldn’t have a hard time finding an audience.

Find it in a library or on Amazon.

Reviewed from a library copy.

November 2nd, 2009  ♥  Books, Reviews  ♥  No Comments »