Book Rec: Shiver

[amberfocus]

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.
 

Comments

[teikachikata.livejournal.com]

Sounds like I may need to give that book a read. I'm always looking for something good these days.

In regards to your comment about strong female characters in in military sci-fi books. Have you read the Honor Harrington series by David Weber? I highly recommend them. Sometimes I want to beat the crap out of some of the political characters in the series but, other than that, I feel the series is phenomenal. The characters really grow with each book in the series.

[ramblinsuze.livejournal.com]

That sounds really interesting. I'll definitely have to try to find it. As I agree with your assessment of the Twilight books (ugh! SUCH a bad example for young ladies), I suspect I'll like it a lot. :)

[amyo67.livejournal.com]

I'll have to give those a try. Thanks, hon.

*hugs*

[wyntereyez.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the rec! I love paranormal books, but nowadays the market is so flooded by Twilight-wannabes that I've been staying away. I'll have to give this one a try, though. The premise sounds interesting, and the characters refreshingly not annoying.

[spellweaver731.livejournal.com]

Sounds interesting :) I too have an occasional(ly embarrassing) thing for teen supernatural romances. There are just so many of them out there these days that it can be hard to wade through them all to find the few good ones, so thanks for the req! I think I will have to check it out.

[yourstar202.livejournal.com]

I read that book back when it first came out and found it refreshing as well, as I worried that it would be like Twilight.

If you're interested, the second book "Linger" came out on the 13 of this month!

I have a recommendation of another YA novel. It's got romance and some supernatural twist, it's called "Impossible" by Nancy Werlin ^_^

I work in a library and YA novels are my favorite!

[crimedoc1.livejournal.com]

I was in Borders the other day and an employee and I were chatting (he's a newbie DW fan - just got turned onto it this season but has been watching Ten reruns and loves David Tennant!) and we were both lamenting the fact that it seems likely EVERYTHING coming out these days is vampires and werewolves and other supernatural. Little Women and Werewolves. Jane Slayer Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter. The list goes on (I must admit, the Little Women one is attracting me for some unknown reason).

My nine-year-old LOVES the Twilight movies, although he's not read the books yet. Although whenever anyone asks him, Team Edward or Team Jacob, he says he's Team Jacob because there's less kissing! I must confess that I like the Twi movies also, although I get extremely tired of Bella's poor pitiful me act and keep wanting to offer her some cheese to go with her whine.

[ninefiend.livejournal.com]

That sounds like a good book, I'll have to try it. I have avoided a lot of stuff lately just because I thought it would be too much like Twilight, but this sounds like a good one.

[rosewarren.livejournal.com]

This sounds interesting! What annoyed me so much about Twilight was that Bella just gave up hope after Edward left her. I NEVER want my daughter to think that's a normal reaction to a boy breaking up with you. Which is why I hope the whole Twi-craze will be over before she's old enough to want to read them.

[yavie-namarie.livejournal.com]

Yay! Another book to add to my monstrous to-read list.... XD
I somewhat enjoyed the story behind the Twilight series, but found the writing left quite a lot to be desired. I'm looking forward to this being quite an improvement (not to mention a lot less damaging to teenage girls' awareness of love and relationships, as you discussed).