Shiver (The Wolves of Mercy Falls, #1)

by Maggie Stiefvater

[girlinthepages]

*Re-read Review*

I first read the Wolves of Mercy Falls series around five-six years ago, when I was in high school and fresh into my love affair with all things paranormal. I had never really heard of Maggie Stiefvater and picked up the series on the recommendation of a friend who really enjoyed werewolf books. I ordered the first book in paperback to try and found myself smitten with the lyrical prose and the angsty characters. Rereading this book for about the third time (I believe I reread it a few years ago before that last book in the series, Forever, was released) I found that Stiefvater’s writing still struck a chord with me, but for very different reasons.

I used to be obsessed with Sam and Grace’s love story. Sam fit into my “type” of book boyfriends (emo, dark hair, piercing eyes, etc). and I identified a lot with Grace as a protagonist. I still think Stiefvater is a wonderful character writer, but as an older reader this time around I found myself drawn to different characters, namely Cole and Isabel. I still thoroughly enjoyed Sam’s character, but I appreciated his tragic back story and his quest to fight his demons more than him as a love interest (I find him frustratingly passive at times). I found myself often irritated at Grace, and she seems to be the most one-dimensional character this time around, with her stoic personality and lack of emotions. Isabel, however, I thoroughly loved, how she seems to be cast as a villain at first but then grows into a character with as much at stake as Sam and Grace, straddling the line between the mythical wolf world and the often times more dangerous human ones. Add Cole to the mix and the clash of personalities in this book are really beautiful.

The prose in this novel was really beautiful, and at times carried a sleepy, dream-like, romantic quality that lends itself to the slow pacing throughout the first half or so of the book. Sam in particular brings a pretty poignant narrative of what it is to be human, and what essential qualities of humanity he can never mimic or retain as a wolf. The interplay between wolf and human is so fascinating too, watching each character who shifts have a different experience with their wolf affliction, with some embracing the change as a means of escape, a means of choice, and some abhorring the feral instincts and tragic circumstances that brought them their fate. I also like how in this series the wolves aren’t really treated as typical “mythological” werewolves, but rather as real, majestic, and vulnerable wolves that happen to possess a dual nature with that of a human.

Overall: There are a lot of really beautiful moments in this book, a lot of stunning descriptions of nature from the barren, snow-silent forests to Grace’s inexplicable yet undeniable connection to the watching and waiting wolves. The pacing may be too slow for some, but this novel has layers of many different stories and many different characters and if you’re patient these interconnected stories will tease themselves out beautifully.

This review was originally posted at Girl in the Pages