Received from the publisher in exchange for my honest review
Linger is Book 2 in Maggie Stiefvater’s Wolves of Mercy Falls trilogy. If you’ll recall, I recently read the first book, Shiver, and while I thought the writing was lovely and the premise was intriguing, I had some problems with certain aspects of the plot. But even so, I was anxious to read Linger, in the hopes that perhaps my qualms did not…er…linger.
Warning: Spoilers for Shiver ahead.
The Plot (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 Isabelle, who already lost her brother to the wolves . . . and is nonetheless drawn to Cole.
My Thoughts
Once again, conflicting emotions. The good news is this book doesn’t spend nearly as long dwelling on the girl-falls-in-love-with-an-animal plot point, which I still find creepy. Grace and Sam are now both human and in love (in a relationship which may be a tad too obsessive to actually be considered healthy) and…happy? Well, no, not really happy, because Sam still has angst about being a wolf, and about the rest of his pack who is currently a wolf, and about the strange unknowns of the new wolves. Sam is just an angsty kind of guy.
However, Linger is not entirely the Sam-and-Grace show, because now we add in the viewpoints of Cole and Isabelle. Cole was not a very likable guy. I’m not even sure if I was supposed to like him. He’s charismatic and charming, but not the kind of person I really want to spend any time with. Add in that half the characters also don’t like him, and I think it’s okay that I didn’t either. He was interesting. Just not likable.
However, I did like Isabelle, which is funny, because she’s also not a very likable person. But a lot of the time, she had the sole voice of reason, making the same observations I was and pointing out obvious things that really should be priorities for the other characters. And despite everything Isabelle went through in the first book, she was surprisingly non-angsty and down-to-earth. Yes, there was the weird thing between her and Cole, which was kind of out-of-the-blue, but it wasn’t a central plot point like the Sam-and-Grace relationship. For the most part, the Isabelle chapters were my favorites.
The plot for Linger is, in my opinion, more interesting than the one for Shiver because there’s a bit more mystery about the whole thing, a bit more of the danger and unknown that makes a story interesting. Also, less focus on the romance (although it is still very much present), which was good because while I love a good romance, I need it to be more sub-plotty and less main-plotty.
My biggest problem with Linger was Grace’s conflict with her parents. I got SO FRUSTRATED with that whole thing, and it was for three reasons.
1. Grace’s parents’ concerns were totally valid, as were their reactions to what Grace was doing and the way they decided to deal with it. If anything, I thought she got off easy.
2. Grace acted like a disrespectful brat, throwing out basically every teenage angsty cliche in the book, driving her parents bonkers, then acting like their reaction was completely unreasonable and over-the-top, and being utterly narrow-minded and self-centered. I honestly couldn’t stand her in those chapters.
3. Grace’s relationship with her parents for all of Shiver and the first part of Linger undermined them when they actually attempted to do some decent parenting, and I hated that that was the case. While I still don’t think Grace’s melodramatic hissy fit was justified, I can at least understand why she was disinclined to listen to her parents’ concerns after they spent most of her life decidedly absent.
Everything about this part just rubbed me the wrong way, and while I understand that it makes sense for the characters (because after all, Grace is a teenager in the throes of her first serious relationship, and her parents are uninvolved 95% of the time), it was beyond frustrating. I think this is a matter of perspective, not the writing or storytelling. If I was a teenager reading this, I may have completely sided with Grace. But I’m a parent, so I couldn’t. You may think this is the best part of the book, and if so, good for you. I’m glad you don’t have to be frustrated.
Then there was the ending, which was actually kind of neat. I saw half of it coming, but the ultimate resolution took me by surprise. It’s the reason I’m going to keep going and read Forever, because I’m really curious how they’re going to work out a solution to this problem. I’m just hoping they don’t turn Cole into a deus ex machina, because I could see it going there. I’m also hoping that we get less angst, less brattiness, and more Isabelle-as-the-voice-of-reason.
Content guide: Language, drug use, profanity, sexual situations, implied violence.