Maggie Stiefvater

The Wolves of Mercy Falls — (2009-2011) Young adult. Publisher: For years, Grace has watched the wolves in the woods behindher house. One yellow-eyed wolf — her wolf — is a chilling presence she can't seem to live without. Meanwhile, Sam has lived two lives: In winter, the frozen woods, the protection of the pack, and the silent company of a fearless girl. In summer, a few precious months of being human... until the cold makes him shift back again. Now, Grace meets a yellow-eyed boy whose familiarity takes her breathaway. It's her wolf. It has to be. But as winter nears, Sam must fight to stay human — or risk losing himself, and Grace, forever.

Shiver

Forget everything you thought you knew about werewolves.

Forget the full moon and silver bullets. Maggie Stiefvater's werewolves are different from any you've seen before. After being bitten, a werewolf changes erratically for a while, then settles into a seasonal cycle. Cold weather brings on a change to wolf form; warm weather returns the werewolf to human form. However, this cycle doesn't last forever. As the years pass, it takes more and more heat to trigger the change back to human, until one year the werewolf remains a wolf forever.

Our heroine, Grace, was attacked by wolves as a child. Just before she was about to become lunch, one of the wolves intervened and saved her. Ever since, Grace has watched for "her" wolf in the woods each winter. And every summer, a golden-eyed boy named Sam watches Grace from afar, too shy to approach her. Then, when one of Grace's high school classmates is killed in another wolf attack, several of the local men take it upon themselves to rid the town of the beasts. This time it's Grace who helps Sam. Finally, the two have the chance to get to know one another. Their budding relationship is marred by one tragic truth: This is almost certainly Sam's last year as a human.

Like Deirdre, the heroine of Lament, Grace is more "real" and well-rounded than many of the girls who populate YA paranormal romance. She's neither too perfect nor too wild, and she doesn't become subservient once her love interest appears on the scene. She's just an ordinary girl, compassionate and resourceful and caught in an unimaginable situation. The relationship between Grace and Sam is also refreshingly "real." They don't just fall in love because of the weird metaphysics that surround them. They bond over music and poetry and cooking and B-grade horror movies. The reader is left with the impression that, if only the looming metaphysical tragedy could be averted, they'd have a happy future together.

Which, of course, makes the inexorable approach of winter incredibly poignant. I couldn't put Shiver down, wondering how Grace and Sam's story would end, and Stiefvater kept me hanging till the very last page.

Shiver is written in vivid prose that engages all of the senses. Maggie Stiefvater does a great job of evoking the sight of a single spot of red against a sea of white, the sound of canine nails scratching at the deck outside Grace's house, and the smell of paper and ink in a bookstore on a warm summer day, making Shiver a fully immersive experience. I nearly forgot it was July here as I read; I could hear the winter winds howling. —Kelly Lasiter

Shiver

The probable Hollywood pitch for Shiver is "Twilight with werewolves," and there are some obvious parallels. Human girl and "monster" boy. Romance. Sense of doomed love. Teens. But Shiver is a notch or two above Twilight, though Twilight was to my mind atrociously written, so that isn't saying a lot. And Shiver does have some major flaws. But despite the flaws and the sometimes-overwrought writing, it also features some good writing and decent characterization.

The general premise is that Maggie Stiefvater’s werewolves change with the cold, though as they get older the change comes sooner and lasts longer until they're permanently wolf. The book is set in Minnesota, so it's cold a lot and pretty reliably. The werewolves can postpone the change by staying in heated areas or wearing lots of warm clothing. If you're wondering why they don't just move south where it's warm all the time, well, that's a good question that somehow doesn't come up until two-thirds of the way into the book and then is tossed into the discard pile with a sentence or two. It's a pretty gaping hole and one that just isn't plausibly addressed. There are also a lot of glossed-over questions dealing with how heated areas and extra clothing work, and to what extent, and why some wolves change permanently earlier than others, etc.

The problem with these issues isn't just that they're unanswered questions but that a) they send a message that Stiefvater either hasn't fully thought through her world or is assuming her readers won't, and b) the “rules” start to feel arbitrary and manipulative, too obviously crafted to set up a tragic love story. This is especially true of the ending. I felt (no spoilers) that the logic of what happens to whom isn't at all clear (actually, it feels as logic is just tossed aside), and so again the author has manipulated events for impact rather than letting things flow naturally as the story/created world has set things up.

The main character, Grace, lives with two oblivious parents (implausibly oblivious, unfortunately) and watches the wolves in her backyard, one in particular. Six years ago she was dragged off her swing by a pack of werewolves but rescued by Sam, one of the pack. The book's jumping-off place is when Sam, in human form, finally meets Grace. The first meetings made me worry a bit that we were in Twilight mode with all the focus on Sam's amazing eyes, but the star-struck teen language is toned down quickly for the most part. Eventually, of course, Grace learns Sam's secret and also that this may be his last year as a human. Their relationship progresses with the specter of his permanent transformation hanging ever overhead. Meanwhile, some of the wolves are getting overly violent with the locals (one boy is bitten and becomes a not-so-nice wolf) and Grace's friends become involved, though with varying degrees of ignorance and knowledge of the truth.

The plot is solid and has its tense moments, though I wouldn't call it gripping — I assume the targeted audience will be more captivated than I was by Grace and Sam's love story — and as mentioned, it has some gaping holes. The characters are a mix. Grace's parents are simply too hard to swallow. Sam is spending nights, showering while her father is home, etc. yet they have no idea she even has a boyfriend let alone that he's sleeping in her room nights on end. Both parents veer too close to caricature as well: clueless business-focused dad and spacey artist mom. Grace is a realistic teen, but neither she nor Sam really stands out. The sharpest, most interesting character is Isabel, the sister of the boy who was supposedly killed by wolves but actually bitten and turned into one. She is introduced as a near-caricature of a rich bitch teen but comes alive as the book progresses, more alive than the other characters who feel bogged down in the thickness of forbidden/doomed romance.

Shiver was a slow read for me. I didn't care much about the characters or the story and the plot holes nagged at me, along with small, niggling things like Grace saying her mom wasn't like all her friends' mothers: "apron-wearing, meal-cooking, vacuuming, Betty Crocker" (I'm not sure this describes many moms today and I'm pretty sure "Betty Crocker" wouldn't be the first comparison by a 17 yr-old) or the scene where Grace crashes into the woods upon hearing a scream, then, not finding anything immediately, calmly goes back to get her sneakers and wanders through paying attention to what a beautiful day it was. It’s the sort of writing that could have used a sharper revisionist eye or better editor.

Shiver isn't bad, but it reads like a work that was not fully thought out or fully polished, one that with another year or so might have turned out much stronger. —Bill Capossere

Linger

Warning: This review will contain spoilers for the previous book, Shiver. There's simply no good way to discuss Linger without them.

You could stop with Shiver. You really could. It ends on a tentative note of happiness, and it's easy to imagine that everything worked out OK after that. Sure, there are a few loose ends: Isabel's dad is still itching to shoot some wolves, the lycanthropy cure is incredibly dangerous and might have unintended consequences, and Grace and Sam have developed a relationship that they're still considered too young to have. But you could turn the last page of Shiver and be satisfied, and hopeful for Grace and Sam's future.

In Linger, Maggie Stiefvater takes all those loose ends and unravels them further. This is a darker book, and a messier one. By that, I don't mean the writing is messy. I mean the characters' lives are messy, and in ways that won't be easily resolved. As I finished reading Linger, I found myself wondering how Stiefvater will write her way out of the situation she has set up — and there's always the possibility that she won't, and that it will end tragically for our protagonists.

The story picks up a few months after Shiver ends. Stiefvater, as usual, does a stellar job of immersing us in the season. Shiver is a winter book; the faerie novel Ballad is an autumn book, and Linger is set in the first, muddy days of spring. Nature is almost a character in its own right in Stiefvater's books, and the reader can never forget what time of year the events are taking place.

Grace and Sam have settled into a comfortable relationship, but Sam is still trying to wrap his mind around the idea of being cured, of actually having a future as a human being. Meanwhile, Grace is experiencing strange symptoms of illness, and Isabel has found a dead wolf at the edge of her family's property, cause of death unknown. Into this mix comes a new character, Cole, who in his late teens is already a washed-up rock star. He rose to fame rapidly, then crashed and burned just as spectacularly, and would have died of an overdose if he hadn't been bitten and turned into a werewolf.

Stiefvater's plots tend to be of the slow-burn variety, and this is no exception. There's a lot of talking and a lot of introspection, but this is how Stiefvater builds up her characters so that the reader is fully invested in them by the time all hell breaks loose. It took me a little while to warm to Cole; he's been an arrogant, self-pitying SOB for years and doesn't change overnight. He does become more palatable once he meets Isabel. She has just the right type of personality to stand up to him, and by the end, he becomes a character worth rooting for.

It does get a little frustrating watching the characters make mistake after mistake. There were times I wanted to shout through the pages at the characters. Even Isabel, who's usually the sensible one in this bunch, is still feeding wolves on her family's land even though she knows her dad wants some more heads for his trophy room. Yet the characters' mistakes are understandable, even when the reader can see what the consequences will likely be.

The plot gathers steam slowly but inexorably, finally building to a moment when an impossible choice must be made. Stiefvater is so good at these moments! I'll admit, though, I liked Shiver a little bit better. Part of that is that, well, I'm a sap. I liked the ending of that book. If Shiver is a fairy tale of sorts, Linger has more of the untidiness of real life (despite the fantasy elements). I also liked that Shiver, unlike Linger, could be read as a stand-alone. Linger is clearly setting up at least one more sequel and possibly more. I hope Olivia comes back for the next one! —Kelly Lasiter