Book Review: Shiver (Book 1: The Wolves of Mercy Falls)

Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

YA Authors, Listen Up!

1. We are done reading about Werewolves. Done! Yes, some people will continue buying books on the topic (me included), but come up with some new monster to entrance us with. Please!

2. Teenage boys (and most grown men for that matter) do NOT write music, recite poetry or read in foreign languages. Stop giving teenage girls hope that they exist! If they do, they are probably gay and won’t want anything to do with girls anyway (i.e. Kurt on Glee is a great example).

3. Parents are not completely oblivious. If you come home smelling like alcohol, smoke, weed or other vile things, or not come home at all your parents will notice. They may, however, choose not to say anything. Too bad for you. Any semi-normal parent will at least voice concern. Apparently it’s a necessary part of any YA novel to have a) no parents or b) bad parents.

4. Tying your novel to a piece of famous literature does not make your book “literary fiction.”

Now if you eliminate all of these new-school cliches from Shiver, you may actually find a pretty good book.

Maggie Stiefavater’s work as has an almost lyrical quality, a cadence that I really enjoyed. Thus, I downloaded the next book in the series.

The plot was good, straight-forward, a little obvious.

It was an easy read. And I would probably have liked it better if it wasn’t about Werewolves (or Vampires, for that matter). If we must have a continual stream of books about shape shifting, then perhaps we can choose a different animal. Any one interested in reading about a hot boy who morphs into a koala? At least he’d be snuggly in his non-human form.



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