Shiver

Shiver

By Maggie Stiefvater

Genre: Paranormal romance

Rating: 2 stars

Summary: "Grace, 17, loves the peace and tranquility of the woods behind her home. It is here during the cold winter months that she gets to see her wolf—the one with the yellow eyes. Grace is sure that he saved her from an attack by other wolves when she was nine. Over the ensuing years he has returned each season, watching her with those haunting eyes as if longing for something to happen. When a teen is killed by wolves, a hunting party decides to retaliate. Grace races through the woods and discovers a wounded boy shivering on her back porch. One look at his yellow eyes and she knows that this is her wolf in human form. Fate has finally brought Sam and Grace together, and as their love grows and intensifies, so does the reality of what awaits them. It is only a matter of time before the winter cold changes him back into a wolf, and this time he might stay that way forever."

Taken from Amazon.com

My review: I think the cover of this book is awesome!  Too bad I judged a book by its cover.

Everyone seems to be raving about this book and so I looked forward to reading it.  (If you are one of those who raved about this book, you may not want to read this, for I fear I may possibly offend you.)  

It took me longer to read this than I was expecting.  And I've come to the conclusion I'm not a paranormal romance fan.  I can handle paranormal with a little bit of romance thrown in.  But paranormal romance to me now equates to paranormal lust.

Sam lusts for Grace, whether he's a wolf or a boy.

Grace lusts for Sam, whether he's a wolf or a boy.

They obsess about each other constantly. 

And why would Grace love human Sam so quickly?  I mean, she liked the wolf Sam because he saved her life.  But she accepts him as a human way too quickly and falls in love with this guy who spied on her obsessively (even once when she was naked, may I add!).

Maybe I just have a problem with lust and sex in YA books.  Or maybe I'm just old-fashioned.  But seriously, Sam and Grace were sleeping in the same bed practically after they met and didn't seem to think anything of it.  And they have sex.  And Sam shares a fantasy he has about her.

I was a little more intrigued with the plot of this book than I was Twilight.  (Basically the same plot with the same lustiness that's why I bring it up.)  Except, Shiver was more intriguing because I wanted to know why Grace didn't turn into a wolf, even though she had been bitten.  That little bit of mystery was seriously why I kept reading.  I wanted to know why she didn't turn.  However, no suspense throughout the entire thing.  Just a little bit of surface level mystery.

As for the characters, they don't seem that well developed to me.  All we really know about them is that both of them have pretty awful parents (I mean Grace's parents don't even know their daughter is hiding a boy in their house!  And Sam's parents are pretty horrible in the way they try and keep him from changing into a wolf).  Oh, and obviously Sam and Grace LOVE LOVE LOVE each other.  Oh, and both of them don't want Sam to be a wolf.  And Sam reveals his big secret immediately, so there's no mystery about him.  And every parent in this book seems to be clueless.  Does Stiefvater have issues with her parentals, or is this just a random theme?

Oh, and can I say plot holes?  So, rather than be effected by the moons, Sam is effected by the cold.  Uh, why not move near the equator like someone in the story mentioned?  Oh, because they become even more sensitive to cold things like air conditioning, rather than just the winter.  What?  And why in the world would Sam have yellow eyes?  ("So help me God, he had yellow eyes!"  That's a quote from A Christmas Story.  A much better use of yellow eyes, may I add).  Back to plot holes though...the ending makes absolutely no sense at all.  Medically, impossible.  And very selfish on Grace's part. 

I'll admit I did like the alternating perspectives of Sam and Grace.  I like that narration style, but I don't think it was executed fully.  They seemed to have very similar voices.  And we didn't really learn a lot about what it was like being a wolf from Sam's perspective.  Actually, we didn't really learn anything about what it was like being a wolf, except apparently you could send mental picture messages to fellow wolves.  And it hurts changing into a wolf.  All things we could have learned from Grace's POV alone.

I think Stiefvater focused more on prose than plot.  The prose was beautiful.  But incredibly over the top.  I don't think an 18-year-old boy would talk that way. And in fact he says "I was a leaking womb bulging with the promise of conscious thoughts," (page 63). Um, what guy in their right mind would say that?  And eww, not a beautiful image.

Yeah, I know I'm one of the few in this world who doesn't like this book.  I will not be reading Linger.

Ok, I'll stop with all the ranting.  I'm surprised you're still reading this.  Go think about something awesome in your life right now to rid yourself of all this negativity.