Review: SHIVER by Maggie Stiefvater

I was first introduced to Shiver by people telling me it is like Twilight with werewolves.  While both books target the same reading demographic, and both are paranormal romance, I think it almost is a disservice to Shiver to make that comparison.  Shiver is a great book in its own right.  By comparing it to one of the best selling and most loved YA books of the century, it is almost unfair.  Die hard Twilight fans will think Shiver pales in comparison—not because there is anything wrong with it, but because they are already so in love with Twilight that they won’t give Shiver a fair chance.  This is all I’m going to say about Twilight—put Edward & Bella out of your mind when you read Shiver and let the book stand on its own.  You won’t be disappointed. 

Shiver takes place in northern Minnesota at the beginning of fall.  Grace is a high school girl who six years earlier had been dragged off her swing by wolves and bitten.  She healed fully from her wounds, but ever since has felt a kinship to the wolf pack that roams the woods behind her home.  One wolf in particular seems drawn to her also.  He is the one who stopped the rest of the pack from killing her when she was a child. 

When a fellow high school student is attacked and killed by the wolves, talk of Grace’s attack resurfaces and angry men of the town set out to hunt the pack.  Horrified that her beloved wolves are under attack, Grace works to stop the hunt, but not before a few are shot.  When she gets home, she find a boy on her deck, naked and bloody from a gunshot wound.  When he looks at her with his unique, yellow eyes, Grace recognizes him as her wolf, the one who saved her as a child and still comes to visit her in her backyard. 

Grace helps save the boy, Sam, but then discovers he is in bigger danger… When the temperature drops for winter, he will be turning into a wolf for the last time, never to be human again.  While the pair are discovering new love, the shadow of winter is constantly hovering over them.  They need to find out how to stop Sam from turning wolf.  The secret lies in Grace’s past.  She had been bitten by the wolves six years earlier and never turned wolf. 

I really liked this book.  It is beautifully written, and the love story is well done.  I could almost feel the temperature changes and smell winter in the air as I read.  If you like YA lit, this is an excellent read.

Overall, I give Shiver…

Plot – 4 bookmarks

Character Development – 4 bookmarks

Love Story – 4 ½ bookmarks

Descriptive Prose – 5 bookmarks (I really felt this book. My husband is from this area of MN, so I’m familiar with it.  She couldn’t have set the scene better.)

Dream Cast (otherwise known as who I pictured while reading) – Taylor Lautner (Sam – Okay, I couldn’t help it!  Teenage, Native American, werewolf.  Who would you have thought of?),  Saoirse Ronan (Grace), Erin Sanders (Olivia), Kirsten Prout (Isabel)