Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater

I’d heard of this book from other bloggers and thought the idea sounded intriguing. After all, I like fantasy/paranormal/vampire stories, so the idea of Werewolves in the forest sounded interesting. It’s also gotten great reviews and was on the bestseller list for quite a long time. Unfortunately, I didn’t read the reviews and blurbs well enough, or didn’t grasp what they were saying because this basically turned out to be a teenage romance story which was completely overrated in my opinion.

A young girl, Grace, is attacked and hauled off into the forest by a wolf during a particularly hard winter. As she is being bitten, one single wolf steps in and saves her from certain death. Ever after, this wolf becomes her wolf. What she doesn’t know is that the wolves in the forest are werewolves. They are people doomed to the transition into a wolf every winter as the temperatures drop, the transition period becoming shorter with each passing year until they no longer turn into humans at all. That end is nearing for Sam, the wolf Grace thinks of as her wolf.

I was disappointed that the main focus of the book turned out to be romance and not the werewolves or even tension within the pack or tension with the human community. There were one or two lines the author picked up and then just sort of dropped as the romance took total control of the book. The whole thing would have greatly benefitted from a branching out to include more of the peripheral characters in the story or including more lore and a longer, more complex plot.

If you’re a teenager looking for a romance story requiring little to no challenge, then this would be a good book for you, otherwise I cannot recommend it.

2/5