Review by Lauren - Linger

Linger by Maggie Stiefvater

In Maggie Stiefvater's Shiver, Grace and Sam found each other. Now, in Linger, they must fight to be together. For Grace, this means defying her parents and keeping a very dangerous secret about her own well-being.

For Sam, this means grappling with his werewolf past...and figuring out a way to survive into the future.


Add into the mix a new wolf named Cole, whose own past has the potential to destroy the whole pack. And Isabel, who already lost her brother to the wolves...and is nonetheless drawn to Cole.


At turns harrowing and euphoric, Linger is a spellbinding love story that explores both sides of love--the light and the dark, the warm and the cold--in a way you will never forget

First Impressions: I was beyond excited. I love Maggie Stiefvater's novels, and have been waiting for Linger since Shiver first came out.

In Linger, Grace and Sam's roles seem to switch places. Grace grows continuously sicker as Sam tries to find her a cure while at the same time trying to take care of the new wolves that phase back into humans as the weather grows warmer. Two new perspectives are added to the mix; Isabel, who plays a bigger role in Linger than in Shiver, and Cole, one of the new wolves with a troubled past he's trying to escape in his wolf form.

As much as I enjoyed Linger, it doesn't quite have the same effect on me as Shiver did. I read some things about people getting confused over the added narratives by Isabel and Cole, but I actually really enjoyed their perspectives, especially Cole's. It helped me understand them a lot better as characters in a way that wouldn't have been possible had they only been seen through Grace and Sam's perspectives. Cole was probably my favorite in this story, and I loved his inner dilemna and personality.

One thing I really missed in Linger - and it is kindof embarrassing and I hate to admit it - were all the... uh... intimate moments between Sam and Grace. There were, of course, plenty of adorable moments between the two of them, but I still was looking for a bit more. There was intensity, but a slight lack in passion... Grace and Sam's relationship was still great in this book, and I still love how cute they are together, but I wanted a little bit of heat :p

Final Impressions: Linger was adorable, but it felt more like a filler novel to me with quite a few unresolved issues at the end of it. It wasn't too much of a disappointment for me though, seeing as it is a trilogy (right?) and the second book usually has that kind of format to it. Great writing once again by Maggie, who remains probably my favorite author at the moment, and I cannot wait for the final book!

Tech Tuesday - Maggie Stiefvater Edition

Hey guys! Today's Tech Tuesday is going to be featuring one of my favorite authors, Maggie Stiefvater. She's the author of Shiver, Ballad, Lament and the upcoming Linger. What I love about her trailers & videos is that she does it all herself! All the music, artistic stuff etc, and I love that she's such a diverse author with not just one focus :)

So here are a couple of her book trailers along with another really cute promo thing for Shiver using Play-Doh.












I'm going to be honest here - the song she wrote for her Ballad trailer is actual the most played song on my ipod right now :p Oh! That's right - she has all of her written music up for free downloading on her site, which you can find right here. Yeah, I really like Irish music... :)

See you guys next week!

Oh, and I'm super sorry if the reviews slow down in the near future - I've started reading Anna Karenina as a little personal challenge, and it's taking a while :p

Look! Bookish News!

or We have a few news we've recently stumbled upon, and think may be interesting to others.

The first (found by Alex): The Wizarding World of Harry Potter coming to life in Universal Studios!

Watch the video below for more information and an animated map of what the world will look like.



Doesn't that look SO COOL? I really want to go! The Youtube video isn't actually the full video. I couldn't find the embed of the whole thing. You can watch the whole thing here though. Expect an appearance of Tom Felton (Draco Malfoy for all you living under a rock) in the second half. Listen for the magical music upon his entrance.

The world of HP will be at Universal Studios in Orlando, Florida. And it's supposed to open in spring 2010! For more news, you can visit the site. I really recommend going to look at the site, because there's lots of neat stuff, like news and pictures.

The second: a change on name in Shiver & a trailer
[Actually, this is old news, but Lauren just read Shiver and discovered this, so it's here.]

So I, Lauren, just finished reading Shiver and shame on you if you didn't read my review. Lol it's ok. You can find it here.

I then went on to do a bit of research on Maggie Stiefvater's sequel to Shiver, Linger, here and found this: (concerning Sam, the main character)

"The more observant of my readers on my Livejournal blog have noticed that the main character from SHIVER has changed names. This is sort of eerie, since I hadn't realized I'd babbled about them enough to realize the names weren't the same, but the fact is, it's true. Sam Roth (which is, for the record, the best name ever) the character from SHIVER who becomes a wolf for the winter, is now Lee Spence.

That sentence, my friends, is the result of 16 hours of baby name book searching, thousands of calories of cookie dough consumption, silent raging, not silent raging, denial, googling, and finally, acceptance.

Because this agony is something that other authors will probably have to go through and because it gives me an excuse to look at a photo of Lee Pace, I'm going to tell my sordid little naming story here.

So. This all started way back when my werewolf story was only a twinkle in my eye. I'd had the dream that sort of laid down the premise, but only two of the characters (neither of them main characters) came with names in the dream. (And one of the two names in the dream was "Robert de Niro" so I had to change it anyway). I can't start writing a novel until I have the Perfect Names for my main characters, so I was in the brainstorming phase. I wanted something sort of timeless, soft-sounding, and inherently sad and emotastic. Which brought me to Sam, partially because of the way that Meg Ryan said, "Oh, Sam," in Addicted to Love, after she's torn his heart into little tiny pieces and feels bad about it, but is stuck in the floor, so she can't do anything but watch from afar and say:

"Oh, Sam."

I just thought . . . whooo, shivers. I imagined the scene where Grace, the other main character, first sees him as a person after years of obsessing over him as a wolf. And when she asks his name, he says, "Sam." And I knew that was it.

Except it wasn't. Because there is this author y'all may have heard of, Stephenie Meyer, who apparently has also written about werewolves. Who knew?That's sarcasm.

Anyway. So apparently, she also had a wolf character named Sam. Who knew?

That's not sarcasm.

I'd read TWILIGHT, but it's been a few years, so I'd completely forgotten that there was a werewolf named Sam in it. And my editors had too. And my crit partners. And basically all of the folks that had worked on the novel since last fall when I first began writing it. But not someone at the Scholastic sales meeting. And not, my editors reasoned (once they had this brought to their attention), the hoards of passionate TWILIGHT fans who had the demographics of every TWILIGHT character stenciled onto their arms with glittery pink ink. Sorry, sparkly. Sparkly pink ink. So at the very end of the editing process, after I'd lived with my characters as Sam and Grace my editors said that "Sam" had to go.

I sputtered and begged and pleaded and finally googled "sam werewolf," where I was greeted by one gagillion hits to Team Jacob and Sam Uley, The First Werewolf Named Sam. And I hung my sad head in defeat, because my editors were right, as they often are. Which meant that my favorite bit of dialog in the entire novel had to completely change:

"Grace,” I said, very softly. “Say something.”
“Sam,” she said, and I crushed her to me.

This was when the silent raging began. Because I knew I had to do something, but I didn't want to. I still had a sequel to write, after all, and I was going to have to live with a not-Sam for another 95,000 words. It wasn't just SHIVER that was riding on this name change, it was the fate of the sequel, LINGER (probably LINGER), as well, and probably my entire sanity as well. My critique partner, Tessa Gratton, spent about 8 hours IMing me back and forth, sifting through hundreds of names, looking for the perfect replacement that would ellicit the same emotional response in me as "Sam."

The catalog copy deadline was, I should add, bearing down on us at this moment, giving us about two days to come up with a replacement. At that point, I think my mood was best classified as "angry/ morose drunk."

Examples of angry/morose drunk exchanges? This is sort of a montage of conversations that occured on Day Two of the Great Name Debacle.

DAVID (editor) to me and ABBY (other editor): How about Daniel? I've always been partial to Daniel.

ABBY to me and DAVID: Daniel is nice.

ME to TESSA: Daniel! Daniel!? Why do they keep saying Daniel to me in my hour of need? Have they not heard Elton John?

TESSA: There, there. How about Jonah? It sounds emotastic.

ME to my DAD: I need something other than Sam, even though Sam is the most perfect name invented.

DAD: Why, again? Because there's this other sampire in TWILIGHT?

ME: Werewolf.

DAD: But 'sampire' is funnier. How about Jack?

ME: Why was I ever born?

Eventually, I really buckled down, hit the stacks, and finally came back to the first name that had occured to me at the beginning of the Great Name Debacle: Lee. It was soft, reminded me of blue jeans, inherently emotastic, and moreover, was the name of the actor who I think of when I think of what Sam/ Lee looks like: Lee Pace. (cue audience reaction: awwww). So now I had Lee Roth. Like Kate Winslet's character at the end of Titanic, I was sad, but triumphant. I told my art critique partners about the name change.

One of them, my friend Nicole, said, "um, Maggie, have you, um, googled 'Lee Roth'?"

I did.

Those of you who were born slightly before me will probably already know what I found. Sigh. So, with a nod to irritating rockers who have ruined a generation of fictional "Roths", I changed his last name to Spence.

So there you have it. The story of how Sam Roth became Lee Spence and everyone lived happily ever after. And the other day, I actually said "Lee and Grace" all by myself, without accidentally saying "Sa-Lee" first. So maybe there is hope for me yet. "


All I can say is that I'm devasted. LEE? LEE? arg. the pain.

So what do you guys think of the name change?

oh, and Maggie did the entire trailer for Shiver (including the gorgeous music :)). I loved the book. So check it out!

Review by Lauren - Shiver

Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater

For years, Grace has watched the wolves in the woods behind her house. One yellow-eyed wolf--her wolf--is a chilling presence she can't seem to live without. Meanwhile, Sam has lived two lives: In winter, the frozen woods, the protection of the pack, and the silent company of a fearless girl. In summer, a few precious months of being human . . . until the cold makes him shift back again.

Now, Grace meets a yellow-eyed boy whose familiarity takes her breath away. It's her wolf. It has to be. But as winter nears, Sam must fight to stay human--or risk losing himself, and Grace, forever.

First Impression: Well, FIRST impression was simply upon viewing the cover, which is gorgeous, so right away I was excited. After reading the jacket description, I was even more excited. Although I am not keen on more Twilight stuff, which I'm sure goes for most of you guys, the ressemblances I could see did not turn me off the book. It seemed like an adorable plot.

It definitely was.

Shiver is a love story. The difference was that it didn't fall into a cookiecutter layout. We start out with love - they've both been in love with the other from a distance for years - and having it grow. I loved that there was never any uncertainty, no stressing over affections. This is similar to Twilight but it was also different. It seemed less intense, more humain. More like Bella's relationship with Jacob - which also works because the book is about werewolves. For those of you who hate Jacob, Sam is not Jacob. He is beyond adorable though.

The conflict of Shiver is that once the weather becomes colder, the human werewolves become wolves until it gets warm once again. Their time spent as a human grows progressively smaller as the years pass, and Sam has reached the point where he will no longer turn human again. The book is Grace and Sam's desperate struggle to keep him human while time runs out.

Final Impression: I loved Shiver. It was refreshing and gorgeous (as is the cover). One of those books you want to just keep with you at all times. It feels like how I felt about Twilight before the whole craze - back when there was only one book out and no one had heard of it. It was that book you absolutely adored and wanted to share with everyone. There is intensity, but it's also refreshing and light.

Add to Shelf?: Yes but it will probably be for Christmas. I'm low on money at the moment lol... A really good book for its genre.

5.5/6 shelves - I feel as though I've been too lenient with my shelves lately. I'm getting picky. This could easily be a 6/6 though so I'll tag it under both lol. I'm torn.

Shiver trailer and giveaway link

Maggie Stiefvater created a beautiful trailer for her upcoming book Shiver.



Can you believe that? It's simply amazing. And it was made by cutting tons of little papers, photographing it all, and compiling it. That would take a ton of work. I mean, I know I wouldn't have the patience.

Maggie Stiefvater is also holding a contest over at her blog here for copies of Shiver. :D So go check it out.