Book Review Linger by Maggie Stiefvater

Book: Linger

Author: Maggie Stiefvater

Release Date: July 13, 2010

In Maggie Stiefvater’s Shiver, Grace and Sam found each other.  Now, in Linger, they must fight to be together. For Grace, this means defying her parents and keeping a very dangerous secret about her own well-being. For Sam, this means grappling with his werewolf past . . . and figuring out a way to survive into the future. Add into the mix a new wolf named Cole, whose own past has the potential to destroy the whole pack.  And Isabel, who already lost her brother to the wolves . . . and is nonetheless drawn to Cole. At turns harrowing and euphoric, Linger is a spellbinding love story that explores both sides of love — the light and the dark, the warm and the cold — in a way you will never forget.

Summary from Goodreads.com

My Review: Since the book is going to release early I am going to put up my review sooner than expected.  I cannot even explain how excited I am to have gotten an ARC of this.  I have actually had it since March, thanks to the wonderful owner at The Fountain Bookstore, but I still pre-ordered a signed copy of my own!  Okay, so onto my review of Linger.  If you don’t know (which if you don’t know this book I think you might have been living under a rock) Linger is the second book of a trilogy, the first book being Shiver.  I loved the tone of Shiver, it was sweet and innocent and so hopeful.  The tone of Linger is quite different, it feels melancholy and you can almost see the despair dripping from the pages of the book.  I am not sure if everyone feels that way after they read it or if Maggie even intended it to read that way but that is how I felt after I finished the book.  That does not mean I did not like it, I did, it just had a sad undertone.

Linger picks up where Shiver left off, Sam is trying to adjust to life as a human and finds that he is still in denial over never becoming a wolf again.  Grace is trying to be with Sam as much as possible, keeps getting frequent headaches, and has to deal with her overprotective parents who are not so happy with how serious Grace is getting with Sam.  While we are on that subject, Grace’s parents are driving me crazy!  They have been absent pretty much her whole life and now is the time they decide to pay attention?  They jump to all the wrong conclusions and just get in the way throughout this story, I was rooting for Grace to just tell the off.

In Linger we also get the introduction of a new character Cole, who is running from his past and finds that becoming a wolf becomes the perfect escape for him.  Cole becomes one of the narrators in this story along with Isabel, Grace and Sam.  So in Linger we have four narrators, which gives the reader multiple perspectives and really paints a complete picture.  I also like getting inside Isabel’s head in this one, she becomes the surprising voice of reason in the story.

The only downside to Linger for me was that I felt like I never really got a moment a “happy” moment for Sam and Grace like we did in Shiver.  Get your minds out of the gutter, I just mean I felt like we never get to see them just happy for more than a page or two.  There was so much going on that they don’t really have down time and I missed that.  It probably has a lot to do with all the conflicts that arise in their lives, but I still missed just seeing Grace and Sam happy.  I also feel like the ending happened in fast forward, which was good because I kept reading and could not put the book down, but on the downside I was left seriously wanting at the end.  Which come to think of it might have been Maggie’s point, to leave us wanting more.

If you liked Shiver then you should pick up Linger and see how the story continues to develop.  Sam and Grace are still the main focus but Cole definitely shakes some things up, especially for Isabel.  I eagerly await the final book in this series, Forever, to see what happens to all of the characters.