Now I am onto the 4th book of 2012! It was Shiver by Maggie Steifvater and holy crap Shiver is amazing! When Sam turned into a wolf one last time I almost cried! Maggie builds Grace & Sam’s characters beautifully and makes you feel for them. I feel that the supporting characters were very well written but as I am very mushy I found myself getting totally wrapped up and lost in the love story. It was so beautiful and sad.
This book has built a world that is just like ours with the addition of werewolves! How exciting is that? The wolves like to keep their world completely separate from the normal world because they fear how people would react if they saw them change from wolf to human and back again. The werewolfness is passed on through, you guessed it, biting! I also love the twist wherein you need not be bitten by the werewolf in its wolf form to get infected. There is a point in the book where someone is bitten by a wolf in their person form and they too get infected.
The book starts off with Grace being attacked by wolves while playing on her swing set as a young girl. All she remembers is the one wolves eyes, his piercing and beautiful yellow eyes. Some how she was saved though she did not remember how it happened. Every winter from then on she would watch the woods behind her house and wait to see her wolf. She felt strong feelings for this wolf and every summer she imagined her wolf spending his days in beautiful golden woods.
There was an uproar about the wolves and them being dangerous because a person was “killed” by the wolves so a bunch of people went into the woods to hunt the wolves. Grace found this out and freaked because she needed to make sure her wolf was not killed. She really didn’t know what to do to stop them so she said that her friend Olivia was out there taking pictures of the wolves so they had to STOP shooting. She crazily ran into the woods to get them to stop. The cops had to escort Grace home to keep her out of trouble.
When she got there she saw a body covered in blood on her back porch. Once she saw his eyes she new exactly who it was and that is where the real story starts. Sam introduced himself and told her that he had been watching her for 6 years from the woods so he came to Grace when it was his time to be saved.
Nothing like a bloody and naked man on your back porch to strike up a love story.
I had not cried during a book since Dumbledors death but Maggie got me to tear up when Sam said what he thought was his final goodbye. After so much time of shifting a werewolf will no longer shift and then after so long of not shifting the wolf will pass on. With that thought in my mind I was like NOOOO Sam don’t go and die on me I need to know more! There HAS to be more to the story of Grace and you! With that I was happy to have Linger with me on my vacation and I started reading it with a hunger to know what happened!
