Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater (390 pages)

This is your typical girl meets wolf, wolf turns into boy, and girl falls in love with boy kinda story that makes you cry at the ending :-). I just can't say enough good things about this book, and thats not just because I am a hopeless romantic in the Twilight tradition. One of the first things that I noticed when I first opened this book is that the print is dark blue which is something I had never seen before. Even though this seems like a minimal thing, really it added to the feeling of the book because a major theme is the cold. Another way that cold plays into the book is that at the beginning of each chapter it gives you the temprature (if I told you why temprature was so important, it would ruin the book so no, you cant know). Something that I didn't think I would like at first was that it is written from two points of view, Grace and Sam -the two main characters. Usually I dont really like books that do this because it always turns out that I like one character more than the other, but here it wasn't the case. Maggie Stiefvater developed both characters equally and made them both interesting and loveable. Plus since I mentioned I am a romantic, it always makes me smile to read the guys version of a love story. I suppose that is something else interesting here, most teen romances take place solely from the girl's point of view, but here it is also from the boy's, it makes the read more dynamic. Yet another thing that I enjoyed about this book is that even though it is a love story, the love isn't perfect. Each character brings something different, and even though Sam and Grace clash sometimes, they work through it. It wouldn't have been the same if there had been no conflict and every page was hearts and rainbows; it wouldn't have seemed real.

I would recommend this to any student who read and enjoyed Twilight, partly because of the content, which is romantic, dramatic and deals with the super natural. I would also suggest it to that group because the reading level and semi-adult themes match up well. By semi-adult I mean there is kissing, some violence and a tidge of sexual content, though its nothing particularly graphic. Just make sure I guess that as a teacher, you are aware of it and perhaps make yourself available for questions.

I saw him again after that, always in the cold. He stood at the edge of the woods in our backyard, his yellow eyes steady on me as I filled the bird feeder or took out the trash, but he never came close.

Just so you know, Maggie Stiefvater has several other books that should also be checked out because they are every bit as lyrical and lovely as Shiver.