Review: Forever by Maggie Stiefvater

Sam is firmly in his human skin and Grace can stay neither wolf nor girl for very long. Summer is almost here though and soon they’ll be together again. Too bad Isabel’s father is planning a hunt to kill all the wolves in the area and the police are beginning to investigate Sam for the disappearances of Grace and Olivia. And what will happen to the pack if Culpepper does manage to bring in sharpshooters on a helicopter, will they all die?

Forever is the last installment in the Wolves of Mercy Falls trilogy and what a finale it is! If you haven’t read Shiver and Linger I suggest you read them first and then you’ll be able to fully appreciate Forever.
Since there’s next to nothing that I don’t absolutely love about these books I’ll just say what makes me a fan. First off there’s the narrative voice. There are four protagonists and every one of them has a voice so distinctive that even without the chapter headings stating whose chapter it is I would’ve been able to easily identify the narrator. Sam and Grace’s chapters are like talking to your best friends who you’ve known for years. These two are calm and steady even when they are indecisive or are going through a particularly hard time. Isabel and Cole’s chapters are full of witty humor, raw feeling and the sensation of being on the edge and I literally laugh out loud when I read them.
I like books that flow at a good pace without moving into breakneck territory and here the author achieved the perfect balance with shorter chapters, moderate use of description and alternating thoughtful introspection with snappy dialogue. It also helped that there wasn’t a lot of leading into a scene. It was more like the literary equivalent of “hit the ground running” – the narrator changes and things are already in the middle of happening.
Any reader of YA is familiar with the archetypal completely oblivious if not completely absent parents. The teens grow up and go through all sorts of things with the parents vaguely somewhere in the background, included only because you can’t really have children living by themselves with no adult supervision. It would be too unrealistic even for fantasy. That is why it was very refreshing to see Maggie Stiefvater buck the trend with her parent characters. They’re all very much there and the level of their involvement actually has an effect on the kids. There’s Isabel who doesn’t speed fearing the parental wrath; there’s Sam, conflicted about his adoptive father but cherishing the time they had together; there’s Grace, scarred by the indifference of parents who only remember that their daughter is a minor when she decides to have a life where she actually matters; there’s Cole, trying so hard to not be like his father but not managing to escape the similarities. None of the relationships are simple but they are there and it was good to read the parent-child scenes that didn’t feel like protagonists were talking at cardboard cutouts.
There are plenty of readers who want their fiction to wrap everything up tidily and present the ending with a pretty bow on top and a “happily ever after” in the post script. I’m not one of those readers. Life is messy and rarely perfect and I enjoy reading a book where not everything works out and not every single question is answered every single time. I like seeing how characters deal with the unpleasant bits and believe that it allows us to discover things not only about them but about ourselves as well. That’s why I was very satisfied with the ending of this series. There are things that are not definitively one way or another and not everything is explained but there’s hope for the protagonists to have lasting happiness. They are on the right track, they’ve got each other’s backs and I turned the last page with a firm belief that all will be well in Mercy Falls.

Review: Linger by Maggie Stiefvater

Maggie Stiefvater is back with a sequel to last year's Shiver. No spoilers as the book isn't even out in the stores yet but I will tell you that this story is different from the last one. It doesn't have the quietness and the feeling of going with the flow and just being happy in the moment. It has the feeling of anticipation coursing all through it, anticipation of something you don't particularly look forward to but that is going to happen regardless because that's how life is, things happen. It also sets the scene for mystery, so I'm betting your gray cells will get a workout trying to answer all the why's before the last installment is on the shelves.
The characters have more depth to them, they aren't children any more, even if they were already 17-going-on-30. They're young adults making their decisions and choosing their path, even if they have to face the fact that they may be burning bridges in the process. The secondary characters are also multi-dimensional and interesting and they make the reader care about them. They also provide a nice contrasting backdrop for the leads.
What puts these books on my list of favorites is that so much of the story is real, the people, the situations, the consequences. If everything worked out perfectly for everyone all the time it would've been fake and Maggie doesn't write fake. What Maggie does write is real people living real lives with all their beauty and all their ugliness and she's not afraid to put it all out there. Writers who are afraid write rubbish and this is not rubbish, very far from it.
This is the kind of book I'm glad is out there for the young readers. They'll have a chance to read about real tenderness and caring and appreciation and devotion and relationships that aren't flashy and won't end up on the front pages of the social gossip columns or on TV but will make all the difference in the world in the lives of two people.
A word of caution - you will laugh some and you will cry some, so get the tissues ready.

Review: Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater

A friend of mine recommended this book to me and although at first I was skeptical within only a couple of chapters the pages started to almost turn themselves and I just had to keep up.
Here's how it all begins: bookish teenager Grace is fascinated with wolves who live in the woods on the edge of her back yard, especially with one of them who keeps coming back and with whom she has an inexplicable bond. When her classmate is mauled by wolves and the townsfolk decide to hunt them down Grace feels she must save them all and 'her' wolf in particular. Soon after she hears the hunters' shots in the woods she finds a naked boy, bleeding and almost unconscious. When she looks in his eyes she realizes immediately that he is her wolf, who is in fact a werewolf.
While this story of fantastical romance is common nowadays Maggie Stiefvater's treatment of the fantasy element is very different from everything else I've read so far. Her wolves aren't affected by the moon but turn when the weather gets cold. They can be killed with regular weapons. They hunt just like any other carnivore in the wild. Sooner or later they stop turning and live out their days as wolves with no conscious memory of their human life. Perhaps the most unconventional though is that there is a cure and Grace is living proof of it, fighting to keep Sam human as long as she can and hopefully forever.
This story isn't action-packed until the last several chapters but this only adds to it's charm. The unhurried narrative gives us glimpses of Grace and Sam alone with their hopes, dreams, fears and reservations. We see them develop and open up to each other and as they do we begin to care more about them and hope for their triumph even as they seem to fail without any hope of putting the pieces back together. The secondary characters are also well developed and interesting in their own ways, with their own plot lines. I really can't wait to see where the next book in the series takes them.
The only thing about this book that I didn't like is that the adults are clueless, again. Sam spends almost all of his time in Grace's room, drives her to and from school and her parents notice nothing. How is that possible? If my parents even suspected whispering in my room in the middle of the night they'd come to investigate but here, just like in many other YA books, they are perfectly oblivious.
I'll let you in on something that I didn't figure out until the last chapter of the book. Under every chapter title there is a temperature indication, it's either for Grace or Sam, depending on who is the protagonist in the chapter. The temperatures are always different, even if the two teens are side by side, and only in the last chapter are they the same because only in the last chapter are they truly together. When this dawned on me I literally got chills.
All in all it's a very satisfying read with a fresh take on a familiar story and I've been recommending to my fantasy romance-loving friends ever since I turned the last page, just as I recommend it to you.