It's Christmas break, and after a semester chock-fill of papers, meetings, and heartbreaking football games, damnit, I need some pleasure reading. I found out about Maggie Stiefvater's Shiver while aimlessly clicking around Amazon.com trying to distract myself from the paper I was supposed to be writing. It got good reviews from readers and critics alike, which I usually take as a good sign with books (with movies I say to hell with the critics, I'm pretty picky with what I choose to read for fun anymore, considering I don't get to do it much).
Shiver is about a Minnesota girl, Grace, who watches, with a devotion bordering on obsession, the wolves that live just beyond the safe boundaries of her backyard. "Safe" probably isn't the best description, though, considering those wolves dragged her from her tire swing when she was ten and nearly killed her. But there's one wolf that saved her, the one with yellow eyes, and she's always felt drawn to him. No spoiler, guys, this one is easy to tell from the book jacket's summary - the yellow-eyed wolf is really Sam, an 18-year-old boy who spends his summers as a human and his winters as a wolf. The other ones in his pack are the same, going about compromised human lives when the temperatures stay balmy but inevitably turning into wolves when the leaves start falling. Here's the catch, though - eventually they just don't turn back in the spring, and they just become wolves forever.
Anyway, it's pretty much been billed as "Twilight - but with ONLY werewolves!" I would say that's an apt comparison and a good hook. It is indeed about love-at-first-sight for a human girl and a paranormal boy, and the incessant suspense and sensory imagery definitely makes it a page-turner.
But I'm gonna be predictable here and say IT'S TOTALLY MORE AWESOME THAN TWILIGHT. Which I feel is a pretty standard assessment for about every other book ever written, but I really mean it, you guys. The entire time I was reading Shiver, I just kept marveling at the lyrical simplicity of it. The character's reactions and interactions are so natural and, I guess, appealing in their kind of relationship normalcy. There are no histrionics here, no Bella with a gaping hole in her chest and etc etc DRAMZ. Grace and Sam are wonderful characters with flaws and there is mystery that keeps the plot tightly bound even as there is room to linger on character moments. And there is definitely some sexiness, deliciously embraced and not all repressed and forboden like it is in far too many other YA supernatural romance books (as in every other book in the Twilight vein).
I just want to say thank you to Maggie Steifvater, too. I'm trying to write something right now, and I've flipping between first and third person narration, even going so far as to Control+F and replace every "I" with a character name. But reading Shiver got me back into the mood for writing first person, which is ostensibly easier to spit out but harder to control when it comes to creating a unique character and not just a Mary Sue for yourself.
Stiefvater succeeds in this department, especially refreshing because she was not one but TWO first-persons doing the narration. The chapters roughly alternate between Sam and Grace's perspectives, which lets on just enough but not too much about the characters and the plot. It was the first time in a LONG time that I found a YA book written in first-person that didn't send my "Self-Conscious Aside" meter into critical levels. Basically, this book renewed my faith in use of first-person POV - in Shiver it's insightful and useful to the plot, not smothering the reader with a stream of consciousness.
I really could gush about this book all day. It was a quick read and I've been waiting to read a "fun book" since August, but I also just can't get over how gosh darn well-crafted it is. I am always so grateful to read a smart and pretty book, one that gets me all emotionally invested while also making me think "well, that was clever." The way it all ties up at the end was neat and clean without being too restrictive for a sequel (due in summer 2010!) but it also seriously made me catch my breath because I was so happy for the characters. Aaaah, I hope I get to read another one like this soon.
No comments:
Post a Comment