Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater

Author: Maggie Stiefvater

Genre: Young Adult,  Romance, Suspense.

Types of Werewolves: Normal wolves with human eyes. The temperature has an effect on their shifting, turning them into wolves for the winter and back to humans in the spring. 

How Lycanthropy is Caused: Infection from a bite. 

Synopsis: A teenage girl named Grace is attacked by wolves as a child, but one wolf in particular saves her life and brings her home. Ever since then, Grace eagerly waits for winter to come so that she can see her savior wolf's return.  Then a student from her high school is attacked by the local wolves and presumed dead. After a local hunting spree, a naked, wounded teenage boy ends up on Grace's porch with has the exact same eyes as her favorite wolf. 

Review:  In a world where sparklepires and pedowolves are now the epitome of teenage lust, I was quite skeptical about the new romance novel Shiver. Thankfully, Stiefvater proved me wrong.  Even though there's a slight amount of cheesiness (and what contemporary romance is without it?), Shiver is still an engaging and satisfying story.  The characters are well developed with interesting pasts and there is plenty of suspense to keep you reading.  

The werewolves are a little unconventional in that instead of the moon having an influence over their shifts, it's the temperature.  As the weather gets colder, the more imminent a transformation becomes until finally the werewolves remain in wolf form for the remainder of the winter.  They still retain some of the more typical werewolf traits, like fast healing, but there's a catch. Eventually they will stop shifting back to human altogether and will remain a wolf until death.  This creates quite a predicament for the two protagonists as they search for a cure. 

Unfortunately, if you're looking for blood and gore, this book is on the light side.  Personally, I'll take disembowelment over finding true love any day, but I would still recommend Shiver as a fun read.  

-Reviewed by PenningtonBeast.

For more information visit:

http://www.maggiestiefvater.com/shiver.php