Shiver
- ISBN13: 9780545123273
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
For years, Grace has watched the wolves in the woods behind her 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 breath away. 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.
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Review by The Well-Read Child for Shiver
Rating:
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.
Review by Bookduck for Shiver
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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.
Review by TJ for Shiver
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Grace is obsessed. Not only does she use her free time to stare out at the wolves behind her house, she can’t quit thinking about them. Maybe it has something to do with the attack she suffered years ago or maybe it has to do with the yellow-eyed wolf. The yellow-eyed wolf stares back at her. Sam has a dual life. By winter he’s a wolf and by summer he’s a boy. And even though he’s never exchanged a word with Grace, his heart stays with her no matter which form he’s in.
SHIVER and I may have gotten off on the wrong foot. I intensely loathe chapters that are only two paragraphs long and Stiefvater seems to love them. Also, I wasn’t a big fan of the point of view switching between Sam and Grace constantly. I suppose the writing style in general bothered me. It’s just a touch more teen drama than I prefer–which I suppose I risk any time I venture into the young adult genre, but has so far not had a problem with until SHIVER. These complaints, of course, are entirely personal preference.
SHIVER is very much a love story. It’s only a sad thing that I found the romance to be one of the weakest parts in the book. Now, I’m not saying every romance has to be full of conflict and whatnot, but I do like to see the couple at least have a bumpy road. In SHIVER Sam and Grace cling together like they were doused in superglue. Any possible argument or disagreement they have is almost immediately ended because, “Oh, baby, I love you and our time together may be too short.” Not in those words exactly, but close. I guess I’m trying to say the romance, because of its utter lack of conflict is not only too syrupy sweet, but also just bland.
There is one issue that Sam and Grace must deal with, that I thought was pretty interesting. This ties into Stiefvater’s version of werewolves. In SHIVER werewolves turn because of the cold, so they tend to stay in wolf form all winter and change back into humans during the summer. Sometimes, wolves stop changing back… Sam is fighting turning into his wolf for the winter to be with Grace–for fear he may not ever come back to her. Still, while this knowledge hands over everyone’s head, it’s not very threatening most of the time in the book and doesn’t truly create as much struggle as it should or could.
Because there’s no conflict in the largest thread of the book, the romance, Stiefvater has to dredge up a conflict somewhere else. What she comes up with is the search of a newly made and unhappy werewolf for the ‘cure’ to werewolf-ism. If this had been fleshed out at all, perhaps I could have swallowed the idea. Instead, the unhappy wolfman latches onto the idea of Grace somehow devising a ‘cure’ because she had been bitten but never turned into a werewolf. Meanwhile, of course, we get no real insight into that particular character’s motivations and are strung through the explanation through very sketchy circumstances. Obviously, 2+2=5 in his case.
And then there’s all the massive plot holes and details that just don’t quite jive with the story. As a warning, the rest of the review contains some vague SPOILERS.
Grace is a kid without parents with parents. What I mean is, Stiefvater explains her parents away as her dad is always working and her mom always painting and both rarely in the house. In fact, both parents are so often away that neither notice the fact that Sam has been living in Grace’s room for weeks. This ends up feeling more like the wishing of a teenager than any plausible plot device. Next, the story speaks about Grace’s traumatic post-bite childhood which she blithely rattles off late in the story. Apparently, at age 11 she was locked in the car and nearly died because of the heat. Does an 11-year-old really have to worry about being locked into the car? I mean, even with child-safety locks (which were not mentioned in the story), wouldn’t a child by that age know to hop into the front seat and let herself out up there? I don’t know, the entire explanation seemed like a write-off attempt to not have to explain why Grace never changed into a werewolf. It’s about as questionable–and related–to the unhappy, ‘cure’-hunting werewolf’s equation. Also, the author loses threads of plot and characters. Such as Shelby–who disappears and reappears, but to no purpose in the story. Lastly, I would mention that many aspects of the end and true ‘cure’ do not make sense at all and seem incredibly haphazard.
I almost feel a little guilty giving this book such a low score, because it’s just so harmless; however, the fact it’s harmless fun doesn’t make it any better. SHIVER is just too much like a clumsy attempt at writing out a teenager’s wish to find a paranormal boy to love and live happily ever after with despite the haphazard outside attempts to break them apart (that truly make little sense). Despite one brush of originality when creating the werewolves, SHIVER deserves this score due to the irritating writing, huge plot holes, and bland romance.
Review by Mary Kate for Shiver
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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.
Review by Lehcarjt for Shiver
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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)