Reviews with content warning for Death - Shiver

Reviews tagging 'Death'

Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater

17 reviews

epeolatrist's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

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alylovesbooks's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Reread 2024. I love this book as I did the first time, I can't believe it's been years since I last read it. And now I can't read linger until I get home.. this book is so amazing .it pulls at. Your emotions ! Def recommend

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nicosta_music's review against another edition

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emotional mysterious sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

Shiver felt like a non-Mormon version of Twilight. It's your typical human/supernatural creature romance, except at least in this book the main characters are likeable and not complete creeps. Generally an entertaining read if you want a cute romance with an interesting subplot. My biggest issue was

the whole cure method -- you're really telling me your best hope for a cure is to inject yourself with some rando's disease-ridden blood? Come on, I know lycanthropy is bad, but I think other, potentially incurable life-threatening diseases are worse.

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rybass08's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional funny hopeful mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

A very stoic book, of love pulling back and forth between two worlds. Heartbreaking and hurtful to read, wanting the change to be permanent so that they can be together forever.

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breannescott's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5

Is a good introduction into werewolves as a genre. It can be read as a standalone.

It made me cry and had a happy ending.

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thebookcoyote's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

TW/CW: Child abuse, violence, death, sexual situations

REVIEW: Shiver is the story of Grace, a high school student ignored by her parents who finds herself obsessed with the wolves in her backyard after an attack when she was younger. It is also the story of Sam – one of those wolves – werewolves – who has been watching her just as long.

I enjoyed this book. It’s not the best book ever written, but it’s fast moving and not an entire waste of time. I liked the werewolf mythology in this book – it was unique and not like anything I’d ever read before. It was also an interesting way to bring tension into the book. The writing was easy to read, although sometimes I thought it got a bit flowery and a little emo – but that could just be because it’s a YA book and young adults are often flowery and a little emo.

The book has a bit of odd pacing. It seems to crawl for the first 300 pages, and then shove the whole climax and conflict into the last <100 pages. And I found the ending – not the last page, but how the last page was accomplished – to be kind of silly and brought in from nowhere. I don’t think this story will stand up very well if you start searching for plot holes, so I’m just not going to.

This was an enjoyable book, even if it was far from perfect. If you like sappy YA and werewolf stories, I recommend this book.

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bes13's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional funny hopeful lighthearted mysterious relaxing sad fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

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sarah_who_reads's review against another edition

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dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.5

This is a YA paranormal romance, sort of. One of the main characters, Sam, is a werewolf, but wishes he weren't, and just wants to be human, and the other main character, Grace, is supposed to be a werewolf, but isn't, for a reason that forms a core point of the plot. I will avoid more spoilers, but this is the beginning of why I would say it's only sort of paranormal. Sam and Grace meet in a violent situation when they are young, when Sam is in wolf form. They both become somewhat obsessed (my word, not Stiefvater's) with each other, and when they meet again, several years later, when Sam is in human form, it kicks off a whirlwind romance with an expiration date, Sam's impending change back to werewolf form for the winter always looming. But in the meantime, a classmate of Grace's is attacked by wolves and killed...

There are good things about this book. It's atmospheric - you do feel like it's cold. For most scenes, Sam and Grace do seem like teenagers in love. Sam and Grace both have problematic parents, and that feels like an issue reasonable for YA novels to address. And the audiobook narration held my interest better than a lot of fiction audio does.

But there are also a lot of things that aren't great about this book. I didn't love Sam's songs he wrote for Grace sprinkled throughout; they felt melodramatic and cringey to me, even for a teenager in love. I'm not a fan of instalove or love supposedly based on someone's physical characteristics (his golden eyes!), and stories like this never really seem real to me. Grace's (and all the kids' in the book, actually) complete disregard for her/their parents just because the parents just seemed a bit absent/checked out felt over-the-top and disproportionate and unrealistic. I don't think most kids would behave the way Olivia and Grace did, for example, or anything close to it, in this situation, and their behavior seemed like an issue the author couldn't figure out how to write more realistically, so she just relied on us suspending our disbelief, which I'm willing to do for werewolves but not for the realistic parts of the book. I hated the gratuitous animal death, almost none of which did anything to advance the story in a meaningful way (why? just why?). There are also teenagers who "consent" become werewolves, which might be a bit sketchy, depending on interpretation. But most of all, the way that Sam and Grace meet is pretty creepy, and the way their relationship evolves before they meet in person the second time is even creepier. I don't love the idea of casting it romantically, especially in a YA book. Tread with care if any form of abuse is a trigger for you. Other CWs include, as I mentioned, multiple scenes with gratuitous animal death (including a long scene I had to skip), parental betrayal, attempted murder, some medical/hospital/needles scenes, and some general gore.

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aseel_reads's review against another edition

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dark mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.25

the perfect read for winter, very atmospheric. a pretty basic plot line but that makes sense for the age of the book (published in 2009). i am glad for the ending but not enough to keep reading the series

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grace_cr1's review against another edition

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relaxing medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

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