{REVIEW} Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater

SHIVER
by Maggie Stiefvater

 

Genre: Young Adult, Paranormal Romance
Pub Date: Aug 1, 2009
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
Length: 416 pages
Spoilers: MARKED
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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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Twisted
The romance between Grace and Sam is completely twisted. There are numerous signs of this being a dangerous, messed up relationship. Tack on the unrealistic nature of many of their interactions (or lack thereof), and it becomes just impossible to be interested in, much less ship. I personally would never condone the form Sam and Grace’s relationship takes.

Super Slow
*sigh* I spent most of the book just waiting for something to happen. Honestly. I get that it’s a romance, but come on. There was so little going on and it was like the entire book just came down to little ‘adorable’ moments between Grace and Sam (which were ineffectual and creepy when you take the above paragraph into account.) It isn’t until the last 50 pages of the book that something interesting actually happens and by then I just don’t even care. It’s too little, too late.

Underdeveloped
God. The relationships in this book were so underdeveloped and so were many of the characters. The characters were all stereotypes of high school students thrown into a book together and told to ‘play nice.’ Thus, this story ensued. Yet, what hurts the most about this is that Sam and Grace never actually have meaningful conversations, making their ‘love’ for each other literally just lust and infatuation, which is SUPER clear if you pay any attention while reading.

Not only are the characters and their relationships underdeveloped, but so is the world. All the rules and regulations of the paranormal phenomena that occur in this book have absolutely zero explanation or basis. Even if they do in this fictional world, they are never explained. Or worse, the explanations are half-assed and literally do nothing to explain why the rules exist and how they work. So many questions and literally no answers because the book is written to not make to ask any questions. Ugh.

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Blow a Hole in that Ship
As I stated above, the relationship between Sam and Grace was AWFUL. Absolutely awful. First off, Grace basically has Stockholm syndrome (which they literally elude to in the book, but then never come back to it at all!) because she is love with someone who saved her from being eaten alive by him and his pack. And the worst part about all this is that she is in love with a WOLF! I don’t give a flying fuck that he’s a werewolf. She literally was obsessed and pined for a wolf and it’s only by stroke of luck that he turns into a dude.

Second, Grace and Sam never actually have a meaningful conversation. Ever! They spend pretty much the entire book going: “I want to fuck you.” “okay.” “No, I can’t!” And there’s a couple “I’m turning into a werewolf”s in there, but this is just a story about two horny-ass teens being excessively melodramatic.

The Cure!
I’m sorry. Meningitis cures lycanthropy??? What kind of answer is that? Literally you couldn’t come up with any other answer to ‘internal heating’ than to infect people with a deadly bacterium? How about scaling hot tea? Or better yet, since we’re not worrying about any of the characters surviving, just throw some hot coals down their throat. That’ll warm them right up. I mean, you need your stomach lining a lot less than you need your BRAIN! Good God. I don’t even know with this anymore. There are a DOZEN of other ways to heat the body internally and many of them are far less deadly, like… I dunno, the flu. Or just throw the person in a scalding hot bath and force scalding liquid down their throat. And why did Sam survive the infection but Jack did not? Anyone want to give an explanation there? No. Yeah, didn’t think so. >.>

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