Shiver (Book Review)

Author: Maggie Stiefvater
Year: 2009
Genre: Paranormal romance/fantasy
Reading Level: Young Adult
Series: First in the Wolves of Mercy Falls trilogy

Plot Summary: Grace has watched the wolves in the Boundary Wood for years, always paying particular attention to one with striking yellow eyes.  It's not until she learns the wolf is really a yellow-eyed dreamy teenage boy that everything changes.  Grace has to figure out how to keep him, even as he's torn between the human and wolf worlds, and the key might lie in her own past.  

Award/s:  Georgia Peach Book Award (2011), An ALA/YALSA Quick Pick for Reluctant Young Adult Readers (2010), Pennsylvania Young Readers' Choice Award Nominee (2011), ALA Teens' Top Ten (2010), Children's Choice Book Award Nominee for Teen Choice Book of the Year (2010) Florida Teens Read Nominee (2010), Teen Read Award Nominee for Best Read (2010), Voya Perfect Ten (2009), The Inky Awards for Silver Inky (2010), Abraham Lincoln Award Nominee (2012)
 
Red Flags: Some violence, a few PG-13 swears and (offscreen) teenage canoodling

My Rating: B+
I liked this book, for the most part.  The middle section suffered from a case of Twilight-itis ("OMG, this boy is beautiful and our luv is epic and true but he is chaste and will not touch me but...maybe he'll change his mind") and dragged a bit after a while.  But it picked up toward the end and I might have said "eeee" when I finished it.  I like the writing overall, though sometimes it was a bit overwritten and there wasn't much of a difference in the two narrator's voices.  Grace was a little bland--I think this is a case of side characters being more interesting than the main ones.  I do give it credit for not having a generic photo cover.  Thank you, cover making people at Scholastic.

A few favorite goofy sentences:
"With particular clarity, I remembered that conversation clearly..." (o rly?)
"His skin bulged and shimmered for a moment before each radical change, like a placenta covering a terrifying, feral infant."  (I know where placentas are now, and they are over yonder) 
"Finally I took the guitar...and smashed it into pieces... When Dad came down from his room, he found me sitting in the middle of a sea of splintered wood and snapped strings, like a boat carrying music had crashed on a rocky shore." (Say what?)