Shiver (The Wolves of Mercy Falls, #1)

by Maggie Stiefvater

[jnikkir]

3.5 stars...

I feel bad rating this only 3.5 stars, so I (originally - see my last note) rounded up to four. I was really excited to read this book. The reviews I read from people who loved it described things that I was expecting to love just as much. But now that I've finished it and thought back on it, I'm just not enamored.

The story just felt a little bit sideways the whole time. In my opinion, it would've worked so much better if it had been written in third person rather than first. Lyrical writing is great; I love me some beautiful descriptions, and I loved Maggie's [b:The Scorpio Races|10626594|The Scorpio Races|Maggie Stiefvater|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1330964654s/10626594.jpg|15535056], which was so atmospheric and gorgeous and the stylistic choices worked in that book. But in this book -- in a much more modern setting where teenagers who still speak like teenagers are telling the story from their own perspectives -- something felt off. The narration wasn't even close to the characters' speaking voices. It was pretty, but I just didn't believe it. It worked a little bit better for Sam because that seemed to be part of his character. But the style of narration was exactly the same for Grace and I had trouble differentiating them at times. And that just didn't work for me at all.

Other reviewers also said that the story was pretty slow until the end, but I honestly wasn't expecting it to be THAT slow compared to the final few chapters. It left me with a really "woah what just happened" feeling, like the book suddenly decided to change from lyrical modern fairy tale to action-packed fantasy while trying (sometimes) to remain lyrical... It just didn't work. Grace and Sam spent the first 2/3rds+: meeting and instantly-falling-in-love, hanging out and being (yeah I admit it) pretty adorable, and hiding Sam from the cold.

Admittedly, there were some plotty side-plots going on during the time that I've labeled "slow", but I had one of two problems with those. Either A) not enough suspense was built in those side-plots for them to have any real impact on the slowness (at least for me). Or, B) the side-plot turned out to have no actual importance. Like Beck and the new wolves who actually turned out to have been recruited all along... I felt like this was dragged out for the sole purpose of adding some tension. It turned out to be such a non-issue and would've taken Beck 5 seconds to explain to Sam. Unnecessary.


Meh, I don't know. I might have to round my rating down to 3 stars, just because I'm pretty annoyed that I didn't like this book as much as I thought I would. I liked it when I was reading it, but reflecting back... not so much. *sigh* Hindsight is 20/20. Not sure if/when I'll be reading the next 2 books in the series.