Review: Linger by Maggie Stiefvater

Linger by Maggie Stiefvater

Published: July 2010

Publisher: Scholastic Press

Available: Amazon 

Blurb:

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. 

 

There were so many things I expected of this book and I don't know if they were completely delivered. Regardless there were so many things I loved about this book.

To start if you have not seen the  book trailer check it out. For me the trailers for all three of the books are wonderfully done and tell so much about the books, some of which I didn't make complete sense of until I read the books.

The tone of Stiefvater's first Mercy Falls book Shiver is continued perfectly here.  Linger is poetically and beautifully written. Stiefvater's writing flows smoothly and her occasional use of poetic style is well done. The one problem I had was that things moved sooo slowly. I wish things there had been more of a sense of urgency.

Grace and Sam's love is tested even as it builds. There were moments where I felt like there was a gap between them that didn't feel natural for two young lovers, but Stiefvater was able to pull them back together. Grace's parents drove me nuts in their suddenly inconsistent behavior, but in a way it worked to build some suspense. Hopefully there will be some resolution to their actions in the third book.

The additional focus on newcomer Cole and Isabel was probably where I found myself the most conflicted. While their story lines were interesting and I really enjoyed the interactions between the two of them, I found them a distraction to Sam and Grace's story. Shiver was really about them discovering their love, but here with the added multiple points of view I just felt less connected to them. 

The ending was a bit hard for me to take. About two thirds into the book, I knew what was going to happen and I wasn't happy with it. While the first book in the trilogy left me with hope and a light feeling, Linger was anything but. There was a confusion of action and then boom! it was over exactly like I expected. I have hope the third book will work better for me.