Scholastic Press; 1 edition, 2010
ISBN-10: 0545123283
Available: New Hardcover and Kindle
Linger is the second book in Maggie Stiefvater’s popular series The Wolves of Mercy Falls. While the first book was clearly a romance novel (albeit a flawed one) in which the main characters, Sam and Grace, alternate point of view and finally get their happy ending, Linger is… well, kind of a mess. You know there’s a problem when the author has to tell you in the prologue that the book is a love story.
Unlike Shiver, Linger is narrated not by two people falling in love, but by four different people- Grace, Sam, Isabel (sister to Jack, who died when she attempted to cure him of lycanthropy by injecting him with meningitis-infected blood) and Cole, a charismatic, self-destructive teen rock star going incognito who chose to become a werewolf. The additional points of view reveal that Grace really isn’t very interesting, and Sam isn’t much without her. I don’t find Isabel particularly likable or sympathetic, but she has a little more going for her, and it’s fascinating watching her reaction to Cole. Cole is a fantastic character- funny, sexy, disturbing, arrogant, intelligent, and self-destructive- and the best reason to finish the book. I hoped the story would center on Cole and Isabel’s developing attraction, but Stiefvater doesn’t give them the space within the story to work through their baggage and begin to pull together, because she’s still centering the storyline around Grace and Sam.
Stiefvater actually had to work to create a conflict for Grace and Sam to overcome- and the conflict is a combination of the once-bitten, never-turned Grace starting to feel the beginnings of lycanthropy make her ill, and Grace’s parents (who have been totally absent and completely oblivious of the fact that Sam’s sleeping in their house every night), discovering the two of them sleeping together and banning Grace from seeing Sam just as she’s about to finally turn into a wolf. The “weather changes us into wolves” theory is completely blown, but the cause of the shifting then seems completely random, so the end of the book is sudden and unsatisfying.
As in Shiver, Stiefvater’s language is vivid and lyrical, but Linger just doesn’t come together to form a compelling whole. Cole is a fantastic character, but it’s a heavy load for him to carry nearly 300 pages on his own, and he’s so vivid in comparison to everyone else that that’s really what happens. Still, for all its flaws, it kept me reading. Twilight lovers should enjoy Linger, but it’s best to read Shiver first. Recommended.
Contains:n/a