A review by sarah_who_reads
Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater

dark emotional sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.5

 
This is a YA paranormal romance, sort of. One of the main characters, Sam, is a werewolf, but wishes he weren't, and just wants to be human, and the other main character, Grace, is supposed to be a werewolf, but isn't, for a reason that forms a core point of the plot. I will avoid more spoilers, but this is the beginning of why I would say it's only sort of paranormal. Sam and Grace meet in a violent situation when they are young, when Sam is in wolf form. They both become somewhat obsessed (my word, not Stiefvater's) with each other, and when they meet again, several years later, when Sam is in human form, it kicks off a whirlwind romance with an expiration date, Sam's impending change back to werewolf form for the winter always looming. But in the meantime, a classmate of Grace's is attacked by wolves and killed...

There are good things about this book. It's atmospheric - you do feel like it's cold. For most scenes, Sam and Grace do seem like teenagers in love. Sam and Grace both have problematic parents, and that feels like an issue reasonable for YA novels to address. And the audiobook narration held my interest better than a lot of fiction audio does.

But there are also a lot of things that aren't great about this book. I didn't love Sam's songs he wrote for Grace sprinkled throughout; they felt melodramatic and cringey to me, even for a teenager in love. I'm not a fan of instalove or love supposedly based on someone's physical characteristics (his golden eyes!), and stories like this never really seem real to me. Grace's (and all the kids' in the book, actually) complete disregard for her/their parents just because the parents just seemed a bit absent/checked out felt over-the-top and disproportionate and unrealistic. I don't think most kids would behave the way Olivia and Grace did, for example, or anything close to it, in this situation, and their behavior seemed like an issue the author couldn't figure out how to write more realistically, so she just relied on us suspending our disbelief, which I'm willing to do for werewolves but not for the realistic parts of the book. I hated the gratuitous animal death, almost none of which did anything to advance the story in a meaningful way (why? just why?). There are also teenagers who "consent" become werewolves, which might be a bit sketchy, depending on interpretation. But most of all, the way that Sam and Grace meet is pretty creepy, and the way their relationship evolves before they meet in person the second time is even creepier. I don't love the idea of casting it romantically, especially in a YA book. Tread with care if any form of abuse is a trigger for you. Other CWs include, as I mentioned, multiple scenes with gratuitous animal death (including a long scene I had to skip), parental betrayal, attempted murder, some medical/hospital/needles scenes, and some general gore. 
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