Shiver – Maggie Stiefvater

When Grace was young, she was attacked by wolves in her back yard.     She thought she was dead, but somehow, ended up back in her house, safe.    From then on, she would often catch a glimpse of one member of the pack watching her – she always knew it was the same wolf because of his eyes.

That wolf was Sam, at the time of year that the pack were in wolf form, because it’s the cold that turned them from men into wolves.    And on that day, Sam changed back into a boy, and saved Grace.    From then on, he watched over her as a wolf, but never dared speak to her in the summer, when he was human again, until one fateful summer.

I had real problems with this book.   I actually started it back in the Spring, after I’d just read a bunch of high fantasy, and I ended up putting this one down, because I just wasn’t in the mood.     So I picked it up this fall, when I’d been on more of an urban fantasy bent.    And I did finish it, but I still wasn’t quite in the mood.    I think I’ve reached the limitations of channeling my inner twelve year old.   Which is a shame, because I think if I’d read this book at the same time as Twilight, I would have loved it.    The writing is better, the story is so much less stalker-ish (and it definitely could have tended in that direction if the author hadn’t been in control of the story), and Grace is so much a better character than Bella.     Really, it’s a good book.    I think I just need to give this supernatural romance young adult genre a bit of a break.