MY! WHAT BIG TEETH YOU HAVE!

SHIVER

By Maggie Stiefvater

390 pages

2009

From Inside Cover:

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 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.

My thoughts:

This paranormal romance is told from two different point of views- Grace and Sam. Grace has a huge fascination with the wolves that run free in the forest behind her house. One wolf in particular seems to also have a fascination with her. It turns out that Grace was attacked as a child by a group of wolves, saving her from the attack was Sam the werewolf. Now they are connected by a bond that is very strong and very complicated.

Sam is on borrowed time as he fights to stay in his human form as the temperature drops. Now that Grace has discovered love, she desperately tries to find a way, maybe a cure to keep Sam from leaving her forever.

The writing is beautiful, descriptive, and lyrical especially from Sam's point of view. It was so easy to hear him speak from his heart and his thoughts were sometimes just heartbreaking.

Maggie's character sometimes annoyed me a little bit-maybe because I kept expecting her to react to her parent's indifference and selfishness and it never happened. That relationship just didn't feel real to me. The parents attitude seemed a little to convenient for the story.

I also struggled with the temperature/werewolf thing. We have all grown up with werewolf folklore and it's always been connected to phases of the moon. But it was an interesting twist that was needed for the story.

I'm very interested to see where Linger- the sequel to Shiver takes it's readers. There is more of the tale that needs to be told and I'm very curious to see what unfolds in the lives of Grace and Sam.

This book is available at the Salmon Public Library. I would recommend this book for readers 14 and up based on subject matter.