Review: Forever by Maggie Stiefvater

In a recent Q&A discussion, Maggie Stiefvater mentioned that she loves to write books that will make you cry your little eyes out. And I did…for Shiver. I’m not sure what it is, but Linger and Forever just did not string up the same emotions.  Did I enjoy them? Sure. But the magic just wasn’t there like it was in Shiver.

Forever picks up a few weeks after the events in Linger.  Sam is pretty much going through the motions until Grace shifts back into human form. The new threat in the novel is Isabel’s father attempting to get the wolves taken off the protective list and Shelby, the crazy she-wolf, attacking and murdering new pack members.

Now, while the sparks didn’t exactly fly between Forever and I, there were a few things that I did really enjoy about this book:

1. Maggie has such beautiful prose. It is undeniable. I LOVED it. Her writing style calls to me and speaks my soul’s language. I think this is most quotes I have “liked” from just one book.  I could quote her books all day long because it is so poetic. She just has a wonderful way with words that can invoke so much feeling with so few words. This book can easily be described as “emo,” but never comes across as too much teen angst. The feelings the characters displayed seemed very realistic and believable to me.

2. Cole. Need I say more? Dude is made of that special flavor of awesome sauce. His witty, comedic voice was the fudge icing on my German chocolate cake. YUM.

3. Grace’s relationship with her parents. In a lot of YA novels these days, parents are conveniently out of the picture while out hero or heroine is running of saving the world. Usually, this is unrealistic. However, I really liked how this was handled in this series. Yes, Grace’s parents are not around, BUT this is acknowledged that it wasn’t a good thing or normal. In fact, Grace confronts her parents in Forever about this. I think this was important to address because Grace needed her parents and was forced to grow up without them.

4. Isabel’s feelings about Jack. They were so spot on for how a sibling feels about losing the other. So accurate.

One main problem I had with this book was that every time something big or interesting was about to happen to one of the characters, it immediately switches to another character’s POV. As a result, a lot of the action happens “off-screen” and we are later told about it through another POV. I found this irritating. For example: I would have really liked to see more of Cole’s experiments, the science behind the Wolf, and most importantly, Beck’s capture!

I’m not entirely sure how I liked the ending. On one hand, I think it is a very realistic end and it works.  But on the other, I feel like it just *ends*. It didn’t really disappoint me, but it didn’t satisfy me either.

All in all, this series was a good read and I’m really looking forward to future works from Maggie Stiefvater.