A review by thebookcoyote
Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater

adventurous dark emotional reflective sad slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

TW/CW: Child abuse, violence, death, sexual situations 

REVIEW: Shiver is the story of Grace, a high school student ignored by her parents who finds herself obsessed with the wolves in her backyard after an attack when she was younger. It is also the story of Sam – one of those wolves – werewolves – who has been watching her just as long. 
I enjoyed this book. It’s not the best book ever written, but it’s fast moving and not an entire waste of time. I liked the werewolf mythology in this book – it was unique and not like anything I’d ever read before. It was also an interesting way to bring tension into the book. The writing was easy to read, although sometimes I thought it got a bit flowery and a little emo – but that could just be because it’s a YA book and young adults are often flowery and a little emo.
The book has a bit of odd pacing. It seems to crawl for the first 300 pages, and then shove the whole climax and conflict into the last <100 pages. And I found the ending – not the last page, but how the last page was accomplished – to be kind of silly and brought in from nowhere. I don’t think this story will stand up very well if you start searching for plot holes, so I’m just not going to. 
This was an enjoyable book, even if it was far from perfect. If you like sappy YA and werewolf stories, I recommend this book. 


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