Problematic
In "Shiver" by Maggie Stiefvater, Grace's obsession with wolves gets taken to a whole new level when it turns out that her favourite wolf turns into a cute teenage boy over the summer.
I'm going to say what everyone of us is thinking: borderline bestiality. 17-year-old Grace lives next to the woods and her favourite animals are wolves. I mean, this girl REALLY likes wolves. They're all she talks about and she does everything to get their attention. I'm pretty sure no normal thinking girl would go out in the middle of the night with a blood-dripping piece of meat and try to pet a savage animal. Especially not if said animal and a bunch of other wolves had attacked you as a child and tried to gnaw you to death. Hadn't this been a YA novel, this girl would've got eaten very fast. But instead, her wolf, that she admits to being in love with (wait, aren't we talking about an animal?!), is not a wolf. It's a teenage boy. He's also very hot. Also in love with her. And there begins the beautiful instant love story of Sam and Grace. Despite all odds they want to be together and Grace totally doesn't care that her new boyfriend is actually a dog. Pretty sure that it kind of turns her on. Yuck.
I don't like YA that's centered around a girl meeting someone and that person becoming her, whole world. Grace even consciously notices that she had been negelecting all of her friends in favor of Sam. Yeah, it's convenient that Sam doesn't have a family or an actual human life and embraces being stuck with her 24/7. But the message isn't healthy. You shouldn't ignore everything, start skipping school and stop talking to your friends just because your boyfriend is, like, supercute. The plot had me groaning and wanting to fling the book out the window because it's just such a childish and naive portrayal of a badly written romance. (Plot 0/5)
The novel is written alternating between Grace's and Sam's perspectives. This alone is a pet-peeve of mine because I tend to not connect to the love interest when they aren't a mystery anymore because I know what they're thinking. I noticed right away that the writing is terrible. The novel started of pseudo-poetic, withvery short chapters and little to no character introduction. Maybe Stiefvater tried to stand out through this style, but she just annoyed me to be honest. I second that this novel makes you feel cold literally all the time, I have no idea how she did this, but it's not pleasant. Definitely a winter read. (Writing 1/5)
Another problem with the changing perspective is that Grace's and Sam's character voices are so identical, that at some point I thought I was reading about a sibling relationship. In YA there's two types of male love interests:
a) The bad boy that the girl shouldn't be with because he's oh so evil but secretely has a sweet spot only for her
b) the deep and mysterious guy that reads (foreign-language) poetry, is celibate and loves to play music for his beloved
Sam belongs to the latter category with an extra dose of whipped. Don't get me wrong, I love sensitive guys that aren't afraid to shed a tear or two but come on, it's a teenage dude. The only times I wasactually aware of him not being Maggie Stiefvater trying to speak the lingo, were when he started thinking about how hot Grace is. Which in turn weirds me out even more because he's technically a wolf (shh, to me he is!!). I don't understand how he fell in love withGrace in the first place and their relationship is so rushed and they're so in love so quickly that I just ... ugh!!
Both characters made me cringe so hard that I couldn't possibly finish this. (Characters 0/5)
But I have to give to Stiefvater that the mythology based on werewolves turning according to temperature is quite nice.I just wish she had more of a premise than just that. Because like this, the novel is just shallow, meaningless and second-hand embarassing.
Rating: ★☆☆☆☆
★☆☆☆☆
Overall: Do I Recommend?
Jesus Christ, no! Terrible prose, cringe-worthy characters and a lazy plot. There's nothing really positive about this to be honest. I wonder how people can read the entire trilogy. I salute those who could. To each their own.