Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater

Grace has been obsessed with the wolves in the woods behind her house for years. After being attacked by a group of them and then saved by another, she's felt an attachment to them--especially the one that saved her. 

Sam has been obsessed with Grace ever since he saved her from his wolfish family. Too bad he's only human during the warmest months of the year. 

For 6 years, these two have secretly pined after each other from a distance. That is, until the day Sam is shot in his wolf form and manages to change back into a human on Grace's porch. 

As you can probably guess, this book is all about werewolves, but in this story, the werewolves only become wolves when it gets below a certain temperature and every year after that, it must be warmer and warmer for them to turn back into a human until they eventually turn completely wolf. I thought this was a fairly interesting take on werewolves, though I think the part about them become a wolf completely was a little disappointing. There was a character that was introduced that we will probably never get any more information on as it was his last year as a human. But it also made for a lot of drama since it was Sam's last year as a human as well.

This book is predominantly a romance, which is why I think it was hard for some people to get into and actually enjoy. A good 75% of this book is just Grace and Sam being in love with each other, which wasn't too bad once I got used to it, but it was a little hard to accept in the beginning since it was a case of insta-love. 

I wasn't sure if there was going to much else to this book then Grace and Sam being worried about Sam changing and never being human again until about 2/3rds of the way through, when the action picks up. A kid that went to Grace's school--Jack--was bitten by the wolves towards the beginning of the book and closer to the end he goes kind of crazy and makes life difficult for Grace. He knows that Grace was bitten by the wolves (6 years ago when Sam rescued her) but that she never actually changed. He has it in his head that she knows some miracle cure and that she will help him if he kidnaps Sam. So most of the action happens at that point. I flew through the last hundred pages or so.

Overall, I enjoyed the book. There were some aspects that could've been done better, but I didn't hate any of it. I really enjoyed the writing. The first Maggie Stiefvater book I read was The Scorpio Races, which I absolutely loved, so I knew I had to give the rest of her books a chance. She has a really good way of stringing words together.

If you can get past the insta-love and the heavy romance, this is a pretty good book, especially for werewolf lovers.

I give it 4 out of 5 stars.