Book Review: Linger

TITLE: Linger
PART IN SERIES: Book 2 in the Wolves of Mercy Falls
AUTHOR: Maggie Stiefvater
PUBLISHED: July 2010
CATEGORY: Young adult
GENRE: werewolves, romance, fantasy
PREMISE: Sam is no longer shifting as he used to but that doesn't mean life is perfect. A new werewolf arrives to complicate things for him, Grace, and Isabel and Grace is growing more ill by the day...
MY REVIEW: It's always a nice surprise when an author makes the second book even better then the first and Stiefvater definitely did that here. One thing I much appreciated? No love triangle. She makes complications in Sam and Grace's relationship that does not include another love interest. Thank you. I was beginning to think authors didn't know how to write anything other then multiple love interests anymore, I'm happy to be proven wrong.
Another new thing is the added pov of Isabel and the new guy Cole. Some may find four shifting POVs interfering but I found that it worked really well here. I also really enjoyed the addition of Cole and Isabel. Isabel is frankly my favorite character in this series (my second is Rachel...she's hysterical) and so I loved that we saw more of her. I also liked that Stiefvater made Cole and Isabel's relationship very different from Sam and Grace. They themselves are different characters so naturally their relationship would be different. It was also rather more entertaining. No offense to Sam and Grace but sometimes their relationship could be very eye-roll worthy. Cute, but cliche at the same time. Isabel and Cole were more complicated to me and I liked that.
I will warn that Stiefvater leaves off at a rather abrupt cliffhanger. It's a good cliffhanger but a cliffhanger nontheless. But it definitely makes me look forward to the next book. Hopefully the author won't take too long on it.
WHO SHOULD READ: Those who've read Shiver, Twilight fans, werewolf fans
MY RATING: four out of five wolves

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