Book Review: Linger by Maggie Stiefvater

Synopsis (from Goodreads): 

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.

My Thoughts:  It took me awhile to get into this book but honestly, I think it was because I was in a reading rut.  I just needed to take a little break from reading.  So, after a day of cleaning and a day of shopping and a day of reading a not so great ARC, I returned to Linger and I could not put it down!

When we left Grace and Sam in Shiver, Sam had just returned as a human after being infected with meningitis.  In Linger, he is still human and appears to be staying human forever now.  He is still sneaking into Grace's house and sleeping in her room at night.  However, now Grace is starting to feel sick.  I pretty much knew where this was going and what was going to happen to Grace at the end of this book.  The events leading up to it were anything but boring though! 

After Grace is so sick one night that she actually screams out loud, her parents (after finding Sam in her bed) forbade her to see Sam.  These are parents that haven't been involved in Grace's life hardly at all.  They come across as very selfish and neglectful of their only daughter in Shiver and now all of a sudden, they decide they should be parents and that Grace, who has raised herself and has never been in trouble, cannot be trusted.  I felt the anger and unfairness that Grace felt in this book.  I actually hated her parents along with her!

I loved Isabel and Cole in this book!  Isabel is still feeling guilty about her brother, Jack's death.  She is still a little cold and standoffish but not in a bad way.  It's a "this is how I am and you just have to accept me being brutally honest" way.  Like Grace, she is pretty much left to her own devices and her parents are pretty much non-existent. 

Cole and Victor are great new characters that we met briefly at the end of Shiver.  We don't see a lot of Victor in this book except for in some of Cole's flashbacks.  Cole is struggling with his own messed up life and wants desperately to become a wolf and stay a wolf.  Unfortunatley for him, that just isn't happening.  I love his relationship with Isabel.  There is just the right amount of romance in this book between them but I hope to see a little more romance between those two in Forever!

I really like how the point of views were from Grace, Sam, Isabel and Cole.  It changed it up a bit so you never got bored with one person.  In fact, it often left me wanting to hear more from whoever I was reading through and it would change POVs at just the right time. 

I actually enjoyed this book more than Shiver!  I can't wait for Forever to come out now so that I can see what Sam is going to do!