Young Adult
Pages: 368
Publisher: Scholastic Press
Release Date: July 20, 2010

*Book 2 of a series

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 of all... *sigh*. Second... Talk about guilty pleasure! And third... Well, if you thought you liked Sam, wait til you meet Cole... um, yeah, Sam who?

I wish I could come up with enough praise to complement her writing. But I'm not Maggie, so if you want to find out how fantastically inspiring she writes you're gonna have to read her books. Look, seriously, she could write about aliens who become vampires but in fact are fallen angels, and I would loyally read without hesitation. And the fact that she writes about Cole just makes it all the better.

If you read Shiver (which you should because this one cannot stand alone) you might be wondering what else could happen in Sam and Grace's dramatic existence. They meet Cole. Cole St. Clair is the hottest, most famous teen rock-star of the decade (drugs included) and was just bitten by Beck.

This time the story alternates between four points of view: Sam, Grace, Isabel and Cole, which was a little confusing but really enjoyable. It allows the reader to get to know these new characters thus becoming main parts of the story. While Grace and Sam are somewhat plain and boring characters (I love them, but they are), Isabel and Cole are the spark or the malice that was necessary for this book to be interesting. While I did love Shiver I knew that if she wanted to keep her slow poetic pace she needed someone like Isabel to step up and inject some fun into it. It totally worked, and even though the story lacked action and the pace was slow, the character development and again, the writing, kept me involved the whole time. I highly recommend this series.

Overall, a wonderful sequel to a wonderful book. I cannot wait for the next one!