Book Review: Linger by Maggie Stiefvater

Title: Linger
Author: Maggie Stiefvater
Series: The Wolves of Mercy Falls #2
Release Date: July 13 2010
Publisher: Scholastic Press
My Source: Bought
My Rating: 4.5/5

***Warning: This review contains spoilers if you haven't read Shiver. Read at your own risk!***

Goodreads Summary:
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 Isabel, who already lost her brother to the wolves . . . and is nonetheless drawn to Cole.

My Review:
Linger is the sequel to Shiver (read my review here). Sam was a werewolf who couldn't stay a human, but now he's permanently a human. I thought Shiver ended really nicely. I liked it, but I couldn't see how a sequel would be interesting, and therefore did not jump to read Linger. Shiver just ended very nicely on it's own. Not to mention the fact that I wasn't terribly impressed with Shiver. It lacked a really interesting driving plot and the characters were very predictable.

So that's why it took me forever to get around to reading this one. I am so glad I did! I thought this book would be a rehashing of Shiver, but the other way around (Grace turning into a wolf?). But it wasn't, thank goodness. Here's what made the book amazing for me: Cole and Isabel. Cole was a new character and Isabel was a supporting character that shifted into a main character. We got to hear from both of their points of views in this book.

Both Cole and Isabel presented entirely unique voices and thoughts on the werewolf conflict. The characters were extremely well developed and unique, and I loved and hated them both at the same time. I think this whole book could've been told about just the two of them- those were the good parts.

The adorable romance between Sam and Grace was the highlight of Shiver. It didn't develop much more in this book, but it was still nice to have there on the side. I loved it how both Sam and Grace really wanted to be with each other forever and were even plausibly thinking about getting married. (Not right away of course, but in the future). It was realisitic to me that they wanted this because that's what real people do when they're in love- they want to get married. It felt like a real romance.

There wasn't a lot of plot or action going on here, and this is probably the first book where that didn't bother me. I got so lost in reading about the characters I didn't care about action. Credit to Maggie Stiefvater for being such an amazing writer to make me not care about action. That certainly doesn't happen often.

I'm debating on 4 and 4.5 stars on this one, but I think I'll go with 4.5 stars because it was better than Shiver. I recommend this one if you liked Shiver- or even if you didn't.

Cover: 3.5/5
It fits the book, but I don't think I would've picked up this book on cover alone. Though I do like the color scheme of the series and the words of the book being printed in each book's color.