Annalisa's Reviews > Shiver

My biggest issue with this book is that it was too much like Twilight. I don't want to read anymore Twilight and I don't want Twilight to be the standard that I compare young-adult fantasy/romance to anymore. Even if she wasn't trying to copy Twilight, I'd still compare it. In some ways I wanted to rate this higher--the writing was better (although I found typos), the characters not as irritating (although they faltered on the Mary Sue end), and the romance seeped with melancholy instead of sex (definitely my preference)--but it didn't move me quite the same way. It didn't have that suck-you-into-the-story aspect.

The idea was interesting: once bitten by wolves, the victims change into a wolf over the winter, the summers shortening each year until they would always be wolves, but it took me a long time to buy into the fantasy instead of criticizing the plot holes. I wish Stiefvater had focused more on developing the plot and the minor characters, even the main characters, instead of trying so hard to be tragically beautiful. A lot of what she said sounded deep, but was actually meaningless. It had the potential to be intense and exciting and even as tragically beautiful as she wants, but it falls just short of that and ends up with the heap of justifiably decent young-adult lit, on the better end, but not amazing. Having said that, I am curious enough to read Linger even though I've written off sequels.