Review: Linger

Linger

Maggie Stiefvater

Scholastic Audio

Pub Date- July 13, 2010

Moving right along with the wolves of Mercy Falls, I took a brief 3-day break after finishing Shiver before diving in to Linger.  If you’ve read my review of Shiver, you’d know that I wasn’t particularly thrilled with the first book and would have abandoned the series altogether if it weren’t for the last few chapters and a bizarre cliffhanger.   Well, I’m certainly glad I didn’t.   By the middle of Linger, I had decided that I liked it and by the end, I was almost convinced that I loved it….ALMOST.

From Goodreads:

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 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.

First off, I have to commend Maggie Stiefvater on her enchanting writing.    Her descriptions are in such vivid detail that I am able to visualize the story playing out in my head with ease.   I often found myself getting lost in the writing, daydreaming about the scene she was describing.  Okay, now on with the plot…

The story is told in 4 different perspectives as compared to 2 in Shiver:  Sam, Grace, Isabelle & Cole.  I really loved how all 4 narratives were incorporated into the story line because to be honest,  I looked most forward to the chapters told from Cole and Isabelle’s point of view.   For me, Cole was a much more interesting and appealing male character than Sam-  every girl deep down loves a bad boy, right?  Cole is a cocky, egotistical basket case, which was a nice change from Sam’s poetry reading, paper bird-making, bread-baking character.    And if you happen to listen to the audiobook version, Cole’s narrator is a million times sexier than Sam’s.   Moving on… As for Isabelle, she is definitely my favorite character in the book.  She is bossy and practical and says exactly what she thinks- sometimes, she is the only character who is thinking clearly.

So I can’t say that I LOVED Linger, because I still had issues with certain elements of the plot.   As expressed in my review of Shiver,  Grace’s parents continue to be a source of frustration for me.  In Shiver, they were completely absent from Grace’s life, unrealistically so.  Now all of the sudden, they  decide to be “normal” parents and try to control every aspect of their daughter's life.  They didn’t even seem like the same characters, and they appeared to be written as a way to add conflict or an element of “forbidden love” to the plot.  Perhaps this will be better explained in Forever?  Also, it drove me crazy how both Sam and Grace knew that Grace was turning into a wolf but were in complete denial and ignored the situation.  I thought this was completely uncharacteristic of Grace’s headstrong & blunt character.  Sam and Grace discussed everything, so why not discuss that they could potentially be torn apart again?  Despite my frustrations, I was actually sad to see the book end- I really enjoyed it.  I give it 4 out of 5 stars.