Review: Linger by Maggie Stiefvater

NOTE: Linger is book two in The Wolves of Mercy Falls Series. It may contain spoilers to Shiver, book one.

"In Maggie Stiefvater's Shiver, Grace and Sam found each other. Now, inLinger, 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 Isabelle, 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."

Review:

After reading Shiver for the second time, I immediately picked up Linger, still high from Stiefvater's beautiful and poetic writing. I expected it to be just as good or even better. Sadly, Linger was a disappointment. It picked up a little in the end, but I found myself waiting for something to happen throughout the whole entire book.

In Shiver, the story was told from Grace and Sam's point of view. But in Linger, it's told not only from Sam and Grace's, but also from Cole and Isabel's point of view. I think that this was pointless, and the story could definitely do without. After finishing the book, I still don't understand why Stiefvater did this.

The plot in Linger is somewhat boring and slow-paced. Don't get me wrong: I still loved Sam and Grace just as much as I did in Shiver, but Cole and Isabel as the main characters? Not so much. I never liked Cole; he was plain annoying, and I didn't see why he was so important. He didn't stand out at all. Isabel was somewhat important in Shiver, but I don't see why she was significant enough to have her point of view included in Linger.

The storyline basically went like this: Cole is a new werewolf, and Sam takes care of him, now that Beck is permanently a wolf. Sam despises Cole, but tries his best to like him. Grace gets grounded because she was found sleeping with Sam. Isabel is attracted to Cole. Grace starts losing her humanity, and gets very sick. In the end, Cole thinks up a theory: Wolves don't die of old age. They die when they don't shift anymore. Which is why Grace is dying. The wolf inside of her never shifted. So Cole bites Grace, turning her into a wolf.

It was until the end that it picked up some pace, when it got more interesting. Stiefvater's writing style is still phenomenal, however, which is the main reason why I kept on reading.

Yet I do want to find out what will happen to Grace, so I will continue on to the last of the Mercy Falls trilogy, Forever. I do hope Forever will end on a better note than Linger.

Source: Library

NOTE: Linger is book two in The Wolves of Mercy Falls Series. It may contain spoilers to Shiver, book one.

Linger is now out!