Book Rec: Shiver

So I have two guilty pleasures when it comes to reading books.  The first is epic military sci-fi novels with a strong female main character (think Herris Serano, Esmay Suiza, or Kylara Vatta from various Elizabeth Moon series) and my even guiltier pleasure of supernatural teenage romance novels.  I think I have a teendom of reading Christopher Pike to thank for that.  Anywho, I got waylaid at the library a couple of weeks ago when my daughter asked me to pick up some stuff she might find interesting.  Since she's into vamps and werewolves I did a quick perusal of the young adult racks and came across the novel Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater.  There was an intriguing blurb that made me hand off The Forest of Hands and Teeth (the other book I found) to Rose and make me take Shiver to read first.

After a slow start, where I was constantly praying, "Please don't let this be like Twilight," (it's not) the plot takes off and gets nicely intricate for a teen book.  It's a different take on the werewolf legend where the shift is caused by temperature change and not the phases of the moon, though it explains why people have thought through the ages that it is related to the full moon.  No silver bullets or any of that stuff come into play either.  So when winter comes they turn to wolves and when spring arrives they turn back.  There's a bit of fluctuation for a few weeks as the seasons change.  Chapters are told from alternating points of view, in first person, but each chapter is labelled with who is narrarating it as well as what temperature it is when the story takes place.

What I really like about this romance is that at no time do I ever see Grace let herself become a victim of the situation or circumstances.  Her parents ignore her, and she doesn't like it, but she doesn't feel sorry for herself, she gets on with life.  And if they didn't ignore her, she wouldn't have all this time to spend with a werewolf, so it works out.  Sam, the werewolf of the story, doesn't get all emo or try to push her away from him.  He doesn't make choices for her or try to make her stay away from him for her own good  (Edward Cullen, anyone?  The Doctor?).  He wants to be with her and he tries desperately to hang on to his human form for as long as possible.  This is seriously such a refreshing change.  Stupidity isn't getting in their way, only fate, and they will fight fate for as long as they possibly can without giving up.  Does Grace get sad at times?  Yes.  But she doesn't give up on her life.

I mean one of the things that irritates me most about Twilight is the feeling sorry for yourself with your lot in life that permeates it all and the boy treating the girl like crap and making her choices for her.  It sets a very bad example to teenage girls when the female main character accepts this as okay behavior.  (Bella, I'm looking at you).  There are other reasons, mostly that the first book needed serious editing down and didn't get it, and lots of other small ones.  This one I like because it avoids that whole sort of messiness.

It also has good secondary characters who had interesting personalities, though I would have liked to see them rounded out a bit more.  The sequel, Linger, looks like it has a lot more development of one of these characters so I'm looking forward to that when I get my hands on it.  There are 33 holds at my library for the sequel and only 8 books so I may give in and buy it from the local B&N along with Shiver, since I took so long reading it I had to turn it in before Rose could read it, too.  It's 390 pages and normally I read faster than this.  (I sort of got distracted reading wildwinterwitch's To Dream a Life, Sanctuary and all the oneshots before Silver Leaves and earlgreytea68's last Chaos epic at the same time).

Anyway, if you like supernatural teenage romances, I'd highly rec this one.  And if you've got a teen, it's a good read.  I don't remember any swearing.  There is a very fade to black "first time," and they do share a bed rather chastely for many nights, if that's a concern to you as a parent.  I'd say 13 and up would be fine.
 

Book Rec: Shiver

So I have two guilty pleasures when it comes to reading books.  The first is epic military sci-fi novels with a strong female main character (think Herris Serano, Esmay Suiza, or Kylara Vatta from various Elizabeth Moon series) and my even guiltier pleasure of supernatural teenage romance novels.  I think I have a teendom of reading Christopher Pike to thank for that.  Anywho, I got waylaid at the library a couple of weeks ago when my daughter asked me to pick up some stuff she might find interesting.  Since she's into vamps and werewolves I did a quick perusal of the young adult racks and came across the novel Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater.  There was an intriguing blurb that made me hand off The Forest of Hands and Teeth (the other book I found) to Rose and make me take Shiver to read first.

After a slow start, where I was constantly praying, "Please don't let this be like Twilight," (it's not) the plot takes off and gets nicely intricate for a teen book.  It's a different take on the werewolf legend where the shift is caused by temperature change and not the phases of the moon, though it explains why people have thought through the ages that it is related to the full moon.  No silver bullets or any of that stuff come into play either.  So when winter comes they turn to wolves and when spring arrives they turn back.  There's a bit of fluctuation for a few weeks as the seasons change.  Chapters are told from alternating points of view, in first person, but each chapter is labelled with who is narrarating it as well as what temperature it is when the story takes place.

What I really like about this romance is that at no time do I ever see Grace let herself become a victim of the situation or circumstances.  Her parents ignore her, and she doesn't like it, but she doesn't feel sorry for herself, she gets on with life.  And if they didn't ignore her, she wouldn't have all this time to spend with a werewolf, so it works out.  Sam, the werewolf of the story, doesn't get all emo or try to push her away from him.  He doesn't make choices for her or try to make her stay away from him for her own good  (Edward Cullen, anyone?  The Doctor?).  He wants to be with her and he tries desperately to hang on to his human form for as long as possible.  This is seriously such a refreshing change.  Stupidity isn't getting in their way, only fate, and they will fight fate for as long as they possibly can without giving up.  Does Grace get sad at times?  Yes.  But she doesn't give up on her life.

I mean one of the things that irritates me most about Twilight is the feeling sorry for yourself with your lot in life that permeates it all and the boy treating the girl like crap and making her choices for her.  It sets a very bad example to teenage girls when the female main character accepts this as okay behavior.  (Bella, I'm looking at you).  There are other reasons, mostly that the first book needed serious editing down and didn't get it, and lots of other small ones.  This one I like because it avoids that whole sort of messiness.

It also has good secondary characters who had interesting personalities, though I would have liked to see them rounded out a bit more.  The sequel, Linger, looks like it has a lot more development of one of these characters so I'm looking forward to that when I get my hands on it.  There are 33 holds at my library for the sequel and only 8 books so I may give in and buy it from the local B&N along with Shiver, since I took so long reading it I had to turn it in before Rose could read it, too.  It's 390 pages and normally I read faster than this.  (I sort of got distracted reading wildwinterwitch's To Dream a Life, Sanctuary and all the oneshots before Silver Leaves and earlgreytea68's last Chaos epic at the same time).

Anyway, if you like supernatural teenage romances, I'd highly rec this one.  And if you've got a teen, it's a good read.  I don't remember any swearing.  There is a very fade to black "first time," and they do share a bed rather chastely for many nights, if that's a concern to you as a parent.  I'd say 13 and up would be fine.