I thoroughly enjoyed Lament, Maggie Stiefvater's first novel and Shiver has been on my radar for several months. Werewolf stories are a regular part of my reading repertoire and I was glad to see that Stiefvater was going to contribute to that genre along with continuing to write in the faery genre (Ballad, the sequel to Lament, is due soon).
Unfortunately, and for a number of reasons, Shiver didn't live up to my expectations.
Plot Issues:
A unique or even somewhat unique twist on vampire, faery, werewolf or other lore entertains me and I love discovering a writer who can weave their own ideas into existing mythology and create a new and believable whole. Stiefvater's idea of werewolves changing shape with the temperature, though, just didn't seem well thought out to me. While we were told that a couple of werewolves tried moving to a warmer climate in order to avoid shifting and that they were unsuccessful (a blast of air conditioning - seriously??), I just didn't get the impression that the pack had put much time or effort into further exploring relocation to another climate or other options. And if shifting from human to werewolf and back again is in any way contributing to the early death of werewolves, you'd think the pack would make finding ways to stop it their top priority. The fact that they continue to live in northern Minnesota where temperature changes can be extreme suggests to me that they have not. And I want to know why.
The parental units in Shiver were presented as having little to no parenting skills whatsoever. Grace's parents - who we see the most of - are completely detached from her life; not only are they not nurturing or caring, they're also oblivious. This is Stiefvater's story and if that's where she wants to take us, fine. But I wish there would have been SOME explanation or exploration of just why Grace's parents behave as they do. And I kind of wondered why her father never faced charges for child neglect after Grace was accidentally locked in the car. (Side note: wasn't she nine or ten when this happened? I had some trouble accepting that, at that age, she was so out of it that she couldn't open a car door.)
And the "cure"? Whoa - unbelievably ill-researched (as in "not at all") and reckless. The mind boggles. Well, at least mine did.
IMHO, the plot issues could have been addressed with more careful writing and editing. An editor could have encouraged Stiefvater to insert a couple of paragraphs about how the werewolves had been desperately trying for years to find ways to control their shifting or, if they hadn't, why not. Stiefvater could have chosen to make Grace's parents alcoholics or workaholics or SOMETHING that would, in my mind, have at least started to explain their non-existent parenting skills. As far as the "cure" goes - I have no idea what could have been done to make that more realistic. Just - none.
Writing Issues:
I like descriptive passages. I like lyrical writing and the judicious use of metaphors, similes and all that other writery stuff. Stiefvater can do them all and (often) very well. But early on in Shiver, I found myself thinking she was overdoing it. Sometimes, when you go outside at night, it's just "dark" - and that's good enough. Though the length of this review might imply otherwise, I wasn't taking notes while reading, but the "overdone" impression seemed to ease off about midway through the story.
Each chapter of Shiver is told from either Grace's POV or Sam's. While this did work to give us some degree of insight into the two main characters, I frequently found myself flipping back to the chapter header to see whose head I was in. That shouldn't have been necessary, but the complete lack of character voice made it so. Because character voice adds so much to my enjoyment when reading, I found this to be Shiver's most glaring flaw.
Lastly, for a story that should have been FULL of tension, there was a somewhat surprising lack of it. And I can't put my finger on quite why I thought this was the case. And while it was occasionally inserted, I also thought Shiver should have been crackling with sexual tension - young couple, in love, basically sharing a bed every night. But instead the sexual tension seemed, at best, half-hearted. In fact, I wondered a couple of times if all the shifting from human to wolf and back had somehow drained Sam of most of his testosterone.
A sequel to Shiver, called Linger, is due in the Fall of 2010. It's not going on my eagerly anticipated list. While I didn't hate Shiver, it fell short in so many ways that I don't feel I can rate it as "OK" either. So... 2.5 stars from me. I'm rounding up to 3 stars because I haven't lost faith in Maggie Stiefvater. My disappointment in this book didn't cause me to cancel my pre-order of her next - Ballad, Lament's sequel, which I'm still eagerly looking forward to reading. I think Stiefvater has a lot of talent - talent that admittedly may need a bit of honing - and I am expecting great things from her.
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