Shiver
By
Maggie Stiefvater
Goodreads | Amazon
Series: Wolves of Mercy Falls #1
Release date: August 1st, 2009
Rating: Sam is a beautiful cinnamon roll.
Series: Wolves of Mercy Falls #1
Release date: August 1st, 2009
Rating: Sam is a beautiful cinnamon roll.
Shiver is a werewolf story. Grace Brisbane has
always watched the wolves near her home in Mercy Falls, Minnesotta after a surviving
childhood attack. But things are about
to change when the wolf who saved her turn into a boy.
Maggie
Stiefvater’s writing is incredibly lyrical. There are parts that could almost be a song or
poetry. I thought that the touch with temperature at the beginning of each
chapter. It was a small touch that made
the pace of the book that much more urgent.
I love
Sam. He is so earnest and pure. Tragic male character are never wasted on
me. I am so easy. I like how Stiefvater used
physical transformation as a metaphor for identity. The more Sam changes into a werewolf the less
sure of who he was he becomes.
I always
have a little difficulty with Stiefvater’s heroine’s. Grace seems cold and there is a part of me that held back. “I don’t think that we would be friends…” I
read somewhere recently (was it twitter?) that it doesn’t matter if you don’t
like a character. The point is to
understand them. I think that that is
why I still love this (and all her other books) even when I don’t like the
heroines. Through her writing you understand
them. I know how Grace thinks and
why she acts the way that she does. Grace
is terrifyingly practical and very spare with her emotions. She has an inner
stillness. Or maybe it seems that she is going at a different speed then the
other characters. Is that a form of
control? Grace comes across as very
controlled and her thoughts and action read as overly controlled. This all makes complete sense with the
way that she was raised.
Grace’s
parents are terrible. Not a little terrible but all the way
terrible. How do they still have custody
of her? It isn’t benign neglect. This
seems to part of a larger trend in YA.
Actually not really a trend because as long as there have been books
written about non-adults there has been the “absent parent trope”. In a way
this book lampshades that trope by making it clear how painful and damaging
long term neglect can be. I still wanted to call Child Protective Services
for her.
How to
describe the relationship between Sam and Grace? In some ways it was incredible instalovey. They lock eyes when they are much younger and
that is it. If that is something that
enrages you then this might not be the book for you. I usually don’t enjoy that trope but was able
to overlook it here. On the other hand
it was also very will they/won’t they. I
knew that they were going to get together but it seemed as if it took ages for
it to happen. Not in a bad way but in a
holding your breath waiting for it to happen way.
Maggie
Stiefvater is one of my favorite authors.
Shiver isn’t my favorite of her books but only because her Raven Boys
Series (my review of The Dream Thieves) is so good that it defies reality
so don’t let that stop you from reading this.
From Goodreads:
