Review: "Forever" by Maggie Stiefvater

I am going to be brutally honest here people and start out with one thing I absolutely hated about this book: the title! What kind of a naff, boring title is "Forever"? It just screams teenage romance in the worst possible way. But let's not now judge a book by its cover (which by the way is too sparkly and silvery for me...) or its title. Let's crack on with reviewing what is actually on the pages!

*If you haven't read Shiver and Linger, DON'T READ FURTHER*

So Grace is a wolf, Sam is heartbroken, Isabel is grumpy and Cole is hyper. So everything is pretty much as when we left off in "Linger". And that is both good and bad really because it is slightly... dare I say boring?... at the beginning. The story is quite simple actually. Isabel's horrible father wants to shoot all the wolves - from a helicopter with sharpshooters... With Beck out in the woods in wolf-form and Grace constantly shifting, there is pressure on Cole to find a cure (scientist, the obvious next step from being a rock star...not). Sam is out of his head with worry and with being accused by the general society for having killed Grace, who sees that her only chance to save him from accusations is to reappear and speak with her (still horrible and cold) parents.

So quite a lot is going on. Lots of sort of action but somehow it just never makes it out of "kind of interesting" territory. Sam and Grace are just bloody boring, Cole and Isabel are the interesting characters but they don't feature enough in this book - they deserve so much more spotlight.
Basically, I only read it because I had the two others, otherwise I wouldn't have bothered with it I am afraid. Worst part of it was the ending actually.
It is too bad really because Maggie Stiefvater is actually a good writer with a great sense of story and character. "Forever" is not the ending that The Wolves of Mercy Falls series deserves and this is an author who could have done better.

Read This If: You liked "Linger" and "Shiver" and want to know how it all ends. Otherwise, don't.

Review: "Linger" by Maggie Stiefvater

The other day I published the review of "Shiver" by Maggie Stiefvater, the first book in the Wolves of Mercy Falls trilogy. Today, time has come to review "Linger", the second book in the series. If you haven't read the "Shiver" and do not want spoilers, please do not read this review :-) I'm not afraid to admit that I read "Shiver" more or less in one go (had a few breaks to make tea and dinner and so on) but with "Linger", I did not have that luxury so instead I read it over a few days.

The story continues where "Shiver" left off. Sam is now a boy, this time forever. No longer does he have to fear the weather or the cold and he is slowly getting to grips with the implications that this has. Suddenly he has a future and he has to consider what he wants to go with his life - will he go to college? Will he pursue his passion for music? All he knows for certain is that he wants to be with Grace. She is everything to Sam. However, he also has to deal with the fact that being permanently human, he still has a responsibility for the other wolves and with the new wolves that Beck has created, this is a little more trouble than Sam wants.

One of these new wolves is Cole. A famous rock musician who screws up everything he touches, he has become a wolf to forget. For him it is the ultimate drug to heal his broken soul. Another person with a broken soul is Isabel. Meanwhile Grace is happy to have her Sam but as her parents are suddenly starting to take an interest in her life, their relationship becomes more and more difficult. To further complicate things, Grace's health is rapidly deteriorating and the doctors can't find anything wrong with her. The situation becomes more and more tense as "Linger" takes us deeper into the story of The Wolves of Mercy Falls.

 I really like "Linger" - not least because focus is less on Sam and Grace, who to be honest are not the most exciting characters ever and more on Isabel and Cole who are so much more interesting. These two are seriously damaged goods which is probably why they seem to attract each other and they damages make them interesting. I love the fiery Isabel who has opinions and is not afraid to voice them. This girl is cool. The Sam and Grace story on the other hand is really cute and the way they get into trouble with her parents should be something that many teens can relate to...

 All in all "Linger" is a great sequel and I thoroughly enjoyed it! Hope you will too.

 Read it if: You read "Shiver". Otherwise read that one first, then read some Rainer Maria Rilke and then read "Linger".

Review: "Shiver" by Maggie Stiefvater

You must have heard about "Shiver". I am sure you have - at least if you are a YA-liking kind of reader because it has been all over the blogs. For that very reason I held off reading it. I don't know, I just get really stubborn sometimes. "If everybody else likes it, I am going to skip it."-thing. Which is really stupid because if all you people like it, the chances that I will like it as well are so much bigger. Really, sometimes I exhaust myself...

But before Christmas I (luckily) gave in and bought both "Shiver" and "Linger", the sequel. I got them at a really good price (secondhand) and thought that if I like "Shiver", I would be glad to have "Linger" lingering around. This turned out to be a wise decision because even though "Shiver" is all about wolves (a subject that I have been off ever since "Twilight"), it is actually a really good YA book.

The story goes like this. Grace Brisbane is living in a little Minnesota town with her parents who are always absent. Even when they are home (rarely), they are emotionally absent and it falls to Grace to take care of things such as cooking dinner and making sure she does her own homework. They have no idea what happens in her life and that is probably good because Grace is honestly quite a strange girl. She is a bit of a loner who has only two friends at school and in the winter time she spends all of her free hours looking at the wolves at the edge of the forest. When she was a little girl, she was attacked and almost killed by them and ever since then, they have held a special place in her heart. Strangely, you might say. One of them, a wolf with beautiful almost human eyes, she almost sees as a friend and she dreams of following him into the woods.

SPOILER!!!!!!

Obviously (if you ask me) it turns out that the wolf is really a werewolf - or at least it is a boy, Sam, who during the winter is caught in the body of a wolf. When Grace saves his life after he is shot, it is love at first sight. And trouble at first kiss. And so begins the trilogy of The Wolves of Mercy Falls.

The good things about this book are many and I will only number a few here:

1) Grace is easy to sympathize with. As a main character she is quite good.
2) It has a lot humor and I love that about it! So many YA books are too busy being just serious or just fun. This one hits all the right notes when it comes to balancing humor and seriousness.
3) The love story part is much more realistic than other YA books (here I am thinking about Twilight in particular...)
4) Grace's parents really caught my interest and had me angered. They are so uncaring and it makes for an interesting side-story.
5) Some of the minor characters are really fantastic. My particular favourite is Isabel!
6) The poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke features. If you haven't read anything by Rilke, you need to do so asap. Off to Amazon you go.

There are also a few not-so-good things, the ones I found most annoying were:

1) Grace is rather boring... She has no real interests apart from wolves and maths and she is not a really very good friend. She is a leeettle beet socially akward.
2) Sam. A little bit whiny at times. Would like him more man and less... boy.
3) Olivia. As minor character goes, she is a pretty annoying one. She should either have been left out or had been given more personality. She ends up a bit cardboard-ish.
4) Sam's poetry is too much for me. Skipped it all, it was just too too much.

Read it if: You love paranormal romance. You always hurry straight to the wolves when you visit the local zoo. You like a good comfort-read with no big surprises but lots of little ones.