Customer Reviews

Shiver (Wolves of Mercy Falls)

5 star:		(361)
4 star:		(173)
3 star:		(100)
2 star:		(50)
1 star:		(23)

 

 

The book tells the story from the alternating points of view of two characters. Grace has been watching the wolves outside her Mercy Falls, Minnesota home every winter. She is drawn to one in particular that has stunning yellow eyes, and she's certain that it is the same wolf who saved her from a pack of wolves who attacked her when she was a young girl.

Sam leads two lives. In the spring and summer, he's human, but when the cooler temperatures of autumn descend upon him, it's not long before he turns into a wolf for the winter. The problem with being a werewolf is that the longer you're a wolf, the less time you spend in your human form until one spring, you don't change back and are forever a part of the wolf world.

When Grace meets Sam, one look at his yellow eyes makes her certain that he's her wolf. They are drawn to each other and it doesn't take them long to realize that they've been in love for years as impossible as it may seem. As the temperatures get cooler, Sam and Grace struggle to keep him human, but the bitter cold and other obstacles threaten to take him away from her forever.

What I love about Maggie Stiefvater's writing, especially in Shiver, is that it's completely seamless: the transitions between the two main characters' points of view and the way that she brings werewolves into what seems like a perfectly normal world. I'm one of those people who rarely reads chapter titles or headings because I find them distracting, and not once did I have to glance up at the beginning of a chapter to see who was speaking. Sam and Grace have their own distinct voices and characteristics, but the switch from character to character is not jarring the way I've seen it in a lot of other books. And the coolest thing? Grace and Sam each have their own strengths and complement each other well. I love to see strong female characters in books for teens, and Grace is definitely smart and strong and can take care of herself.

But what I love the most about Ms. Stiefvater's writing is her ability to depict chemistry between two characters--first with Dee and Luke in Lament and now with Sam and Grace. She's masterful at showing and not telling: glances, touches, dialogue, and thoughts all create a completely believable love between a girl and a werewolf.

Shiver is a perfectly executed book, and I continue to be impressed with Maggie Stiefvater's writing.

I adore this book.

Shiver is told through the two main characters, Sam and Grace, and I loved them both. The first-person narration moves between them seamlessly and is never jarring. Spending time with Sam and Grace is enjoyable; they are believable, likeable characters with flaws and quirks and all the things that make people people. The supporting characters are equally well-drawn, if not always equally likeable.

Moreover, the plot is original. Sam is a werewolf, and in the world of the novel, werewolves are human in the heat of summer and wolves in the cold of winter. As the werewolves age, however, their human-time decreases until they remain wolves until death. And Sam feels his last summer coming on just as he and Grace get to know one another.

Sam and Grace's star-crossed romance is at times cute and steamy, but always genuine. There are some PG-13 moments, but these are handled tastefully; I never felt that Shiver was dirty or overly descriptive.

And the words, oh the words! The language is more than descriptive; it's poetic. When I wasn't busy being absorbed by the plot, I was drinking in Stiefvater's descriptions; I felt the Minnesota winter of the novel. I frequently reread sentences and lingered over well-worded paragraphs. And on top of that, Maggie Stiefvater is funny! I laughed many times, and you probably will too.

Finally, the ending is abrupt but satisfying. I was left with a smile...and a craving for the sequel (Linger, which is due in Fall 2010). I highly recommend curling up next to the air conditioner with this one.

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.

I was really excited to get my hands on this book. It's gotten a ton of buzz, and if I'm honest I LOVE the cover. Also, the print-type for the entire book is the same navy/gray as the cover, and for some reason I found this both appropriate and athletically pleasing (It's not hard to read either. It looks black in dim light).

I enjoyed the first twenty pages of the book. And the last twenty pages were reasonably good. However, everything in between was a total disaster. I know a ton of people loved this book, and I just can't see what they got out of it that I didn't.

It is very much over-written. Instead of a sunset we are given a `screaming red sunset.' Instead of light coming thru a window we have `frigid white light' (and those are both from the same paragraph). In trying to be poetic (a theme in the book), the author constantly lapses into purple prose. The worse being Sam (the werewolf hero) regularly spouting poetry in his thoughts in the form of song lyrics. "I was a leaking womb bulging with the promise of conscious thoughts..." So... HE was menstruation... coming to life? (That is so disgusting it makes me crack up - And I can't seem to get it out of my head!!!). Some of the metaphors are pretty atrocious too.

The story itself is the same as Twilight. Average girl with oblivious parents becomes the object of obsession of a paranormal boy. Chaos ensues.

I was quite interested in the werewolves - their history, biomechanics (they are scientific not magical) etc. But at the end of the book I knew almost nothing about them.

And the plot has HUGE holes in it. I spent the entire reading saying, "Well why don't they just..." The biggest example of this is the wolves themselves. If Sam doesn't want to be a werewolf, why doesn't he just move to Coastal California where the temperature is so moderate that the winters won't turn him into a wolf and the summers don't require air conditioning? Problem solved. (And yet when someone suggest to him that he look at other living options he got mad rather than consider it. This kind of stuff just drove me nuts. It makes no sense!!!)

Too many things just happened without having any significance or without being explained. Or they happened so conveniently that it felt forced. Other than the romance, the plot just kind of wandered around.

It is a miracle I finished. I put it down at least twenty times and only kept picking it up because I wanted to find out where the wolves had originally come from. (see paragraph 5 above for the answer)

I waited to read Shiver, not only so I could fairly review it with our comparisons to Twilight. Unfortunately this story falls even worse than Twilight. Sam, the werewolf, only significant feature is his "golden eyes"; otherwise he is quite bland, and boring. In this world Werewolves change because of temperature so when it gets cold they cannot maintain a human form, werewolves also can become stuck in wolf form, although why this happens is never explained, the myths and world building of the werewolves remains vague in the story, focusing too much on the romance which unfortunately becomes an unhealthy codependency with Sam and Grace, the relationship is too cloying, and suffocating, with lots of desperation on both partner. I think that is not very romantic at all. Grace, the ordinary, but really attractive heroine has been waiting for Sam her whole life and that seems to be the only purpose to her character, she was written in for the sake of giving Sam a love interest/soul mate.

Another Gripe I have against the novel is the flowery language, it borders on being too descriptive, I was tired of how much attention and detail is given to Sam's golden eyes.
This prose style also got annoying because telling it simply would have given better emphasis to the words or feeling that Stiefvater wanted to convey, instead the tone of the story is forced as if she was trying to hard to impress the readers with her vocabulary.

Because of the mature content further on, this is not a preteen book more of a late teens age range, unfortunately the tone of voice of the book is too immature for that age range.
I will not read the next book, since this story was just not for me.

Once upon a time, a female author decided to write a different sort of young adult romance. The protagonist? A nondescript teenaged girl, the only child of self-absorbed, neglectful parents. The plot? Said girl is romanced by an unsuitable boy. Why is he unsuitable? Because the boy has undergone a supernatural change that will endanger their relationship. Not to mention that the boy's peers may want to eat the object of his affection. And because without some sort of token plotline, the reader will be bored senseless by the endless descriptions of the young man's golden eyes.

The title?

[drumroll, please]

Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater (2009).

What?

You thought I was going to say Twilight, didn't you?

I'm definitely in the minority here, but I despise this book. Please bear with me while I count the ways...

First, the author is clearly trying to capitalize on the myriad squealing fans of the Twilight series. Fair enough---even bad writers have to make a living.

The vampire thing has been done to death, though, and zombies are so darned icky---ooh, I know, let's make him a werewolf. Only instead of being subject to the phases of the moon, let him change into a wolf when the weather turns cold. And let's increase the tension and sorrow by giving each werewolf a finite number of changes before he permanently assumes a wolf's shape---that's the ticket!

Which leads me to my second problem...if you're going to invent a supernatural scenario, give it a cursory glance to find the gaping plot holes. If a werewolf doesn't want to turn into a wolf, why not move to a warmer climate? The author breezily dismisses that suggestion with a brief anecdote about some werewolves that unsuccessfully attempt a move from Minnesota to Texas, where the increased ambient temperature makes them unusually susceptible to air conditioning.

And I'm thinking, really? Is it possible that there are no heat waves in Minnesota, and no one in the state owns an air conditioner? What happens when a werewolf opens a walk-in freezer? If you throw a werewolf into a hot tub while he's a wolf, will he change back into a human? And hey, why not move to a temperate microclimate like, oooh, I dunno, the San Francisco Peninsula? The average summer temperatures are no higher than those in Minnesota but the winters are a whole lot warmer.

Third, if you're going to alternate first person narratives, give each character a distinct voice. (The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins should be required reading for any author attempting this feat.) All of the characters in this book sound like twenty-something young women---just like the author (what a surprise!). The male characters are particularly unconvincing. Need an example? Okay, just remember...you asked for it.

On page 63, Sam, who is wounded, has turned into a human and deposited himself on Grace's doorstep. An excerpt from his internal monologue follows:

"I was not a wolf, but I wasn't Sam yet, either.

I was a leaking womb bulging with the promise of conscious thoughts: the frozen woods far behind me, the girl on the tire swing, the sound of fingers on metal strings. The future and the past, both the same, snow and then summer and then snow again."

May I have a show of hands, please? How many men in our audience ever think of themselves in terms usually reserved for a obstetrical/gynecological exam? I mean, seriously? A leaking womb?

Not to mention that leaking wombs don't bulge with anything but...erm...the substances that they're leaking. Enough said!

Fortunately, that is the only jawdropper in a book peppered with bad metaphors. ("We were silent, dark drops of water, rushing over brambles and around the trees as the men drove us before them." Sorry, drops of water don't rush---they fall and go splat.) But yeah, the lousy writing and dire editing are my fourth problem with this book.

Fifth, if your hero has a dark and painful incident in his past, make him mysteriously reluctant to discuss it. Don't have him divulge the details the moment the heroine asks! There's a little concept called Too Much Information---character development is so much more effective when every trauma is not immediately revealed.

Sixth---why are Grace's parents so utterly clueless? That's right---so they will conveniently be unavailable during any remotely interesting event in their offspring's life. It's that dreaded scourge, Orphan-With-Parents Syndrome! How bad is it? Sam is living in their house, sleeping in their daughter's bedroom, and they don't even notice. And once Grace says, "Yoo hoo! This is my boyfriend, and he never leaves!" they're like, "That's nice dear."

Yikes! And it's not just Grace's parents that have this problem---all of the parents in this book abandoned their common sense along with their contraceptives.

Next, for pity's sake, do a little research before writing medical scenes. The hospital in this fictitious town clearly needs to have its staff fired and accreditation yanked, and the unnecessarily dangerous lycanthropy cure that the characters attempt is obtained in such an idiotically unbelievable fashion that I nearly threw the book across the room in disgust.

Finally, if you're trying to write a romantic novel, it helps if there's at least a smidgen of sexual tension.

A few hints here. The protagonists should maintain their personal boundaries, both physical and emotional, while they slowly get to know each other. Alternate fear and ambivalence with love and longing. If you choose to disregard this advice and the hero and heroine are immediately (and implausibly) drawn to each other, at least keep the readers wondering whether (not when!) their relationship will ever be consummated.

I could go on and on, but you're asking yourself, "If you disliked this book so intensely, why did you finish it?" I guess I was trying (really hard!) to figure out what everyone else saw in this book that I couldn't.

The author conveniently leaves several key plot elements unresolved, so a sequel is undoubtedly in the works, but since I honestly don't care what happens to these characters, I'll skip it.

Not recommended.

The cover is gorgeous, yes, and the concept of an all-werewolf book is intriguing, yes.
And that's it.

The worst thing about Shiver was the romance. It's extremely bland and blind. I get it that Sam saved Grace when she was a child, but HELLO? Grace loved Sam as a wolf, not as a human, considering she never knew him as a human. Loving the wolf that saved you is understandable, but loving it as you would romantically love a human being? I'm going to be lenient and say, for the sake of argument, that their love is real and not teenage obsession. How are you going to account for their instant lovey-dovey? I mean, even if they have some kind of love connection, they don't really even know each other. Seriously, think about it. Even if Sam was always looking at Grace, his werewolf memories are hazy and he admits not even remembering her name. If we say Sam watched her in his human form, well, that doesn't mean he really knows her either. As for Grace, she only knew Sam as a werewolf. And you know what? Grace herself admits she's obsessed. And she is. It's like Bella and Edward, except (and I'm not even a Twilight fan) boring.
It's all very disappointing because Shiver has nothing going for it (plot-wise) except the romance, and the romance itself is not believable or interesting.

The plot? There are so many plot holes and the main conflict is ridiculous. Characters come up but then they don't even have anything significant to contribute.

Something really laughable was the lack of parents. The fact that they're not attentive seemed like a total cop-out so Sam and Grace didn't have to deal with parents. If Grace's parents are like that, at least give us a really good reason, or something. She doesn't care her parents are like that, and it's just... they're not fleshed-out at all.

Overall, very disappointing. She opted for instant, obsessive love with no believability, instead of something really fleshed-out. The plot is so ridiculous you can't even call it a plot. There are so many cop-outs in this book.. wow just honestly, save yourself money and don't buy this book. If you're really curious, get it from your local library.

So. I forced myself through the book. I was intrigued by the first chapter. I have to admit, the first chapter was enough to push me halfway through, and by the time I made it, I just went ahead and suffered through the rest of it, if only to have a good reason to write a one star review. I didn't want to miss a world changing ending if there happened to be one at the end of this book. There wasn't. The book contains material that in theory, belongs in the older YA category, but the voice and tone of the story suggests younger. I wasn't impressed with the dialogue, at all. I think I laughed out loud, especially in instances of something like "Did you just tell him you went potty on yourself", blush hehaw, whatever. Seems like Grace was created for Sam to dote on in an otherwise aimless existance, in which he either will or won't change forever into his wolf form. He needed a reason to not change, so the universe threw him a paper thin Mary Sue, whom he loved inexplicably, and whole heartedly the entire way. And she him, of course. Don't even get me started on her parents, and Grace's characters inability to stick with any solid trait. She seems whimsical and romantic in one moment, but apparently she's stoic and robotic. Lacked a solid plot, lacked any real direction besides a sappy teenage romance, and I couldn't make myself care about either of them. Or his beautiful yellow eyes. They're not contacts, btw.

I wanted to love this book. The cover is stark and attention-grabbing, and the first few chapters are too. On the first page, you meet the protaganist Grace who is in the middle of a snowy forest, surrounded by wolves. The author does such a great job setting the mood I could almost feel the cold. The writing is subtle and lyrical, and I was excited to see how the story unfolded. Unfortunately, page one is the book's high point.

For reasons that are never explained, and are more than a little creepy, Grace is obsessed with the wolves outside her house and her only interest in life appears to be staring at them for days on end. Her two "friends" are some of the worst one- dimensional, underdeveloped characters I've come across in any book, ever. Here is one particularly cringe-inducing line of dialogue from one of these teen girls "I hate when my peeps can't play nice with each other." It's like the author was writing out of an outdated phrase book of how teens talk.

When Grace finally meets Sam, the wolf she's been watching all these years, it is, of course, love at first sight. That wouldn't be so bad if the author had attempted to keep some kind of suspense and intrigue in the developing relationship, making the reader eager to know more as the characters get to know each other. I like to see tension, and apprehension and nerves, and all those exciting feelings that go with adolescent love. Instead, the author turns the characters into an old married couple from the day they meet. From the onset, they sleep in the same bed every night, do everything together, and their idea of a romantic, wild date is taking a road trip to a candy store. Snooze. Twilight may not go down in history as the greatest book ever, but Stephanie Meyer knows something about eroticism and the slow, maddening, build up of desire. Don't expect to find any of that here.

Sam is impossible to buy as a teen boy. He describes things as "lovely" and "yummy" and is constantly thinking in poetry and lyrics that is supposedly deep, but is really cheesy and lame. The "cure" at the end feels desperatly contrived, and it is entirely inexplicable why anyone would want to be a werewolf under this author's rules- unlike stories where the paranormal characters are immortal and have superpowers, the werewolves in this story are just wolves, with no powers of human thought, who will die after a short life. And yet we're supposed to believe that people would want to become wolves? Or that Sam's choice to walk away from them is hard? I don't buy it. And Grace is whiny, petulant, devoid of passion or interests in life outside of Sam. Give me a break.

Finally, the author spends a lot of time on crap that adds nothing to the story. The color of lights is described on almost every page. The characters are constantly talking about coffee, and drinking coffee, and wanting coffee. Far too many pages are spent on long, detailed descriptions of cooking and eating. More attention should have been given to developing conflict and a believable villian.

So, word of mouth has failed me. This book was a recommend from a random girl at the library who told me it was her FAVORITE book in the whole entire world. *sigh* After reading it, I feel out of touch with the whole genre. Maybe I'm too old to read YA fiction. Maybe the time has come for me to give it up.
Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater did not start out well. First of all, it was really slow. Nothing was really drawing me into the story. Usually, by the 4th chapter or so, there is an obvious storyline that is pulling you along, keeping you reading. I put this book down a bunch of times, thinking, "This is not that great." But I stuck it out, because it was someone's favorite book.
Then I got to page 63. This chapter is told from the male protagonist's viewpoint. "I was a leaking womb bulging with the promise of conscious thoughts..." Um... WHAT? Did you seriously just compare your supposedly hot main character to a woman's menstruating womb??? I've read some weird metaphors before. I once read a book where Toni Morrison compared a woman's tongue to a wagging dog penis. But it wasn't like she was a main character. It wasn't like we were supposed to think she was this sexy, stunning wolf boy. I can't believe this book got through TWO editors without either of them saying, "Hey, you might not want to compare your main character to a bleeding uterus." Shame on Abby Ranger and David Levithan. SHAME.
This was just a perfect example for me of the author doing what she does consistently in this book which is go waaaay over the top with the descriptive language. Now, let me clarify. I LOVE prose. I LOVE descriptive language. Have you ever read a Barbara Kingsolver book? Chock full of the stuff. But she knows where to stop. Comparing your main character to a bloody uterus is someone who doesn't get the fine line between prose and "purple prose".
Second thing about this book that bothered me: It had several conflicts that never really did anything much whatsoever. Usually when you read a book, you get a conflict right away. This book has several elements that could have been the conflict for the story.
-We have Shelby, werewolf obsessed with the main guy and dangerously crazy. But other than one big scene involving her, she isn't really mentioned and nothing really happens with her storyline
-We have Jack, newly turned and savage. There could have been a great story element involving his rehabilitation and introduction to the new world he lives in. But no, again, he is barely mentioned except for a few key scenes, then fades away from the story.
-Then there is the "cure" for lycanthropy, which to me is the least well explained element in the story. I find it hard to believe that the characters had to resort to the ends they did in the book. There are plenty of ways to accomplish the same thing without the craziness they did.
The third and fourth things about the book that bothered me were related, so I'm combining them. Have you ever watched a TV show with a teen protagonist and even if the parents start out being ultra cool and involved, over time the show fades them out into these sort of "half parents" who don't seem to give a crap what their kids are up to, don't seem to ever be around because they're BUSY, and generally don't parent at all? These are those parents. And despite the fact that many of these shows exist and are watched by millions, I find it hard to believe that even THOSE parents would be as clueless as THESE parents. Their daughter is attacked by wolves, and they don't care. She is off with their cars at all hours of the day and night and they don't care. She skips school to hang out with her boyfriend and they don't care. Her boyfriend starts LIVING IN THEIR HOUSE and somehow they have no idea??? This is just an obvious way for the author to let her characters get up to whatever business they want without having to worry about the parents getting in the way. And it doesn't work AT ALL for the plot.
And the way Grace and Sam HANG all over each other, like RichandAmy from Zits may be highly amusing in a comic strip satire way, but only serves to drag this storyline down to adolescent in the most alarming fashion. Love is great, really, but this is ridiculous and only a hormone filled teenage girl could take any of this seriously.