Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater

Reading Level: Young Adult 
Genre: paranormal, romance
Pages: audio book format
FTC Disclosure: borrowed from library
Rating: 3/5
Content: One implied sex scene, just a few swear words, no f-bombs
Reading Challenges: A to Z Challenge (author-M), 2010 Young Adult Reading Challenge

Summary:

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.

My Take:  I went back and forth on this one throughout...two stars...2 and a half...then back to two. I thought it was all right, overall I enjoyed it, but it wasn't my favorite. It took awhile to get to the plot. It started off with Grace and Sam just mooning over each other without a lot of action. The series is about werewolves...so give me some action, a plot.

The action never got too exciting, though, which was really disappointing. Just when you thought it was going to get good, it ended way too fast; it was very anti-climatic.

Grace and Sam seemed a bit too obsessed with each other...but compared to Twilight they were pretty normal! So there were a few cheesy lines to each other, but the author did manage to create a feeling of coldness throughout the book so that's pretty impressive.

Also Grace didn't go catatonic after she thought she lost Sam...she still had a life with school and friends, etc...unlike another certain character I know...

But it felt like another Twilight knockoff and why do YA novels have to get rid of the parents? They are either dead, took off, or just uninvolved and/or clueless. Well, Grace's padres are both uninvolved and clueless and Sam's tried to kill him....

But it was relatively clean and pretty well-written and the ending makes me want to pick up the next in the series.

A note about the audio book version: I thought it was done pretty well, the actors were great, but the voice for Sam was too old. He sounded in his mid to late thirties when Sam is supposed to be a teenager so that was a bit annoying...just a heads up!