Review: Linger by Maggie Stiefvater

Title: Linger

Author: Maggie Stiefvater

Page Count: 368 pages

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 Isabelle, who already lost her brother to the wolves . . . and is nonetheless drawn to Cole.

At turns harrowing and euphoric, Linger is a spellbinding love story that explores both sides of love -- the light and the dark, the warm and the cold -- in a way you will never forget."

Review: I'm beginning to see a pattern here. I wasn't a huge fan of Lament, but I loved Ballad. I liked Shiver, but I loved Linger. Just a warning here: there will be spoilers for Shiver, so if you haven't read that yet, don't read this review.

Linger has four narrators: Grace, Sam, Isabel, and a new character, Cole. Usually, I'm not a fan of multiple narrators and I'm especially not a fan of when the viewpoints change multiple times in a chapter. It always seems amateurish, as if the author couldn't convey the other character's emotions well enough through the narrator. However, I really liked it in Linger, and the viewpoints changed a bunch of times a chapter. Somehow, it worked really well for this book.

The characters were awesome, as usual. Grace and Sam were a little gag-worthy and I didn't find it realistic at all that they never seemed to have sex or do more than kiss, especially since they already did. It seemed like they thought their love was above these kinds of things; Grace often spouts: "It's not like that!" But they've already had sex, so, I don't see how that works.

Isabel and Cole were great. I loved Isabel; she's such a bitch, but it works so well. Cole, on the other hand, I was on the fence about. He was a dick, but a barely likable one. That was his character, though. I'm not sure if the reader was supposed to like him. Near the end, though, he gets a lot better, and I found myself kind of liking him for his actions.

Grace's parents: I HATED THEM. They are terrible parents! I'm not going to spoil it for those who haven't read it, but I was so annoyed at what they did. As if they had any right to act the way they did after they basically ignored Grace. Urgh, it just bothers me so much. I raged so hard whenever they came into a scene.

Linger was definitely kind of slow paced, but it had this languid feeling that fit the tone of the book. There are a lot of little hints as to what it happening, but Stiefvater makes the reader wait forever, until you're practically dying with not knowing what's going to happen. I think I've come to like this series a lot more since reading Linger; I feel like Stiefvater got into her writing groove with this second book that I didn't really feel with the first one.

Overall, I'd definitely recommend reading Linger, even if you weren't amazed by Shiver. I think it's definitely worth a chance.

Overall: 4.3/5 stars