A review by ellejo3
Shiver by Allie Reynolds

adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.5

I love a locked-room mystery/thriller where everyone's a suspect and the snowy mountain setting was extra eerie. I enjoyed Lucy Foley's The Hunting Party, so I thought I'd love this one. The book started out slow, but the present-day timeline eventually picked up. In particular, the short chapters and the cliffhangers at the end of each chapter helped with the overall pacing. I kept wanting to read on to see what happened next. I didn't enjoy the chapters set in the past as much, mostly because a lot of the mystery is taken out of them aside from why Milla feels responsible for Saskia. A lot of the chapters set in the past felt more like filler, and given the length, wasn't really necessary.

The mystery and "twist" were pretty obvious early on, especially when you consider why there's a ten-year gap between the two timelines.

I didn't particularly care for the characters. It's not that Milla was unlikeable because there are unlikeable characters that I find compelling or that I'm rooting for, but there wasn't enough for me to care about her. She was grating and annoying and that wasn't balanced out either by positive traits or by anything else that would make me sympathetic for her. She's a former Olympic hopeful who didn't make it and hasn't figured out what else to do with her life until the epilogue. Not making the Olympic team isn't enough for me to feel sympathy for her, especially when you consider how much time and energy she wasted obsessing over Saskia and trying to sabotage her. What's irritating is that there could have been more. For instance, Milla was extremely competitive and couldn't ever turn a challenge down, but the reasoning behind it wasn't really explored. Not exploring more of Milla's backstory and her "emotional wound" was a missed opportunity, especially since half of the book is set in the past. I didn't understand what drove her competitive streak.  In real life, when people are that competitive, there's a reason. There also wasn't a lot of character development aside from Milla realizing she's just as bad as Saskia
but even that was lacking because, in the epilogue, when Milla starts coaching she has two girls who are trying to sabotage each other as she and Saskia had. All she does is slyly tell the one girl, but she doesn't make a point to reprimand them or condemn it. It's also disappointing given the last line where Milla excitedly comments that she "won." She sounds like a sociopath. I think it was supposed to be this shocking last line, but it was more frustrating than an "OMG what an ending!" type of reaction.


What took this from a "meh" book to a book that I disliked is its treatment of gay characters. By far, the trope I hate most in thrillers is when the only gay character is out to destroy the straight characters. Here, the only gay characters are the villains of the past and present.
As for Milla, while she hooks up with Saskia, she doesn't identify as bi or pan, but states that she was drawn to Saskia because everyone was allured by her.
I can't believe this trope was included in a book that was published in 2021. Homophobia in literature isn't limited to a character being rejected or condemned for being gay, it's also representations like this where the gay character is trying to kill the cast of straight characters, or is otherwise the villain. I wish Milla would have been bi/pan because it's different if there are several gay characters and one of them is the villain. But this? No.
This book also plays into the bury-your-gays and the bi/pan character is slutty tropes.
The fact that it's the only diversity in the book makes it even more problematic. Overall, the way the queer characters were used is tired, problematic, and harmful.

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