Early Review: Linger by Maggie Stiefvater

*LINGER will be released on July 13, 2010*

 

Book Description

This is the story of a boy who used to be a wolf and a girl who was becoming one.

Just a few months ago, it was Sam who was the mythical creature. His was the disease we couldn't cure. His was the good-bye that meant the most. He had the body that was a mystery, too strange and wonderful and terrifying to comprehend.

But now it is spring. With the heat, the remaining wolves will soon be falling out of their wolf pelts and back into their human bodies. Sam stays Sam, and Cole stays Cole, and it's only me who's not firmly in my own skin.

Review

Book 2 in The Wolves of Mercy Falls Trilogy

Shiver touched my soul and LINGER reminded me why. The timeless and pure love story between Sam and Grace beats through every page of LINGER. Romantic, tragic, and hopeful in turn. LINGER is the kind of story that, well, lingers with a deliciously bittersweet ache.

Maggie breaths life into her characters animating them in such a way that you can sometimes hear the sound of their voices rather then just read their words on a page. One especially vivid new character is Cole, one of the new wolves that Beck made at the end of Shiver. The scenes that resonated most with me were the scenes that Isabel and Cole shared. Both of these characters are broken in their own estimation. Hazardous, even poisonous to others, and so consumed with guilt that its all they can do to breath sometimes.

Isabel sees in Cole another broken soul that she can exist with without any demands or expectations. Cole doesn't see much of anything initially. He is consumed with the pursuit of oblivion. Becoming a wolf to him is the drug that deadens life. Maggie explained her thought process behind creating Cole as a character whose “contrast to Sam would serve to draw the readers attention to the essential Sam-ness of his character. “

LINGER, while still beautifully moving and masterfully written, isn't quite as impactful as Shiver. The stakes with Sam and Grace were painfully high in Shiver and every page bleed with the urgent inevitability of Sam's departure (the temperature beginning every chapter almost made me cry as it dropped). In LINGER, the peril of this story doesn't present itself until later and the significance of it doesn't fully register until the final chapters. The split focus on Isabel and Cole as well as Sam and Grace added to that complacency. I loved all the characters in LINGER, but the addition of them drew me away from Sam and Grace.

LINGER is an exceptionally written book superior to most every other Paranormal YA novel (Shiver being a big exception). I'm thrilled that the movie rights to Shiver have been sold and can only hope this entire trilogy will find its way to a theater near me in the future. I have mixed emotions about Forever, the final book in this trilogy, releasing in July of 2011. I'm hopeful yet dreading the end for these characters who feel so real that their fates have become almost embarrassingly important to me. If Maggie Stiefvater was any less of a writer, I don't know if I could bear it.

Sexual Content: References to sex. Kissing.

My Rating (out of 5):
Excellent - Loved it! Buy it now & pre-order the sequel.

Product Details

• Reading level: Young Adult
• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: Scholastic Press (July 20, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0545123283
• ISBN-13: 978-0545123280

*Disclosure: I received this book courtesy of Scholastic Press

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