Friday, April 20, 2012

Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater


  • Reading level: Ages 13 and up
  • Hardcover: 400 pages
  • Publisher: Scholastic Press; 1 edition (August 1, 2009)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0545123267
  • ISBN-13: 978-0545123266
  • Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 6.5 x 1.3 inches

Summary

To break it down to the simplest form there is a girl named Grace and she has this "wolf" she interacts with since she was a kid. All her life she sees this wolf, but only in the winter. This particular wolf has yellow eyes and when she meets a boy with yellow eyes she finds herself meeting her "wolf" in person. 
Haha I know that that summary really sucks but, that is what it really is about. Maggie Stiefvater is probably one of my favorite authors because she sets this mood of coziness and the relationship between Grace and Sam is just amazingly sweet. 


Shiver has been compared to the werewolf version of Twilight and I can see that to an extent because there is paranormal creatures and there is romance, but that's it. Shiver's characters are extremely different from Twilight and the story has nothing that compares with each other. In Shiver, Sam the "wolf" is trying to not become a wolf every time the weather gets cold, while in Twilight Bella's convinced that she must become a vampire to live her life the way it should be. Also there is no love triangle in Maggie Stiefvater's Shiver, so I thank her for not accepting this popular trend? of a love triangle will sell to any young adult reader. 


Something that I thought was neat, but I'm not sure that it is in all of the book's editions, but my blue book was printed in blue ink, which was pretty cool detail that I like. Also I think that the cover is beautiful in every way possible. 


So Grace is not one of my favorite characters, but she's bearable, unlike Isabel. Isabel was throughout the novel an iffy character for me. I always felt like she would back stab Grace or do something drastic, but she kept to her place as a side character and will be a bigger stronger character in the second installment. Though, Isabel is the incredibly popular girl in Grace's school, she has some problems that does come with popularity and especially when her brother dies. Isabel is not one of my favorites, but she is defiantly needed in the novel, or else everything else would fall apart. 


In the end, Shiver was a great book for me, but not the best. It's the kind of book that I'd like to reread if it was snowing outside and I had a hot cup of tea next to me, while a bath and body works candle is burning. Shiver is the kind of book that I would not recommend because one) a lot of people already  know about this book and would have read it by now and two) it's not that great of a story that I'd want to follow a whole three books through, but my mistake I already bought the whole series. Maggie Stiefvater is still one of my favorite authors and I'd like to read her other series about homicidal faeries. :)  

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