Linger

AUTHOR: Maggie Stiefvater
PAGES: 360
WEBSITE: www.maggiestiefvater.com/
TWITTER: @mstiefvater
ACQUIRED: Purchase
SUMMARY:

"This is the story of a boy who used to be a wolf and a girl who was becoming one."

Sam is having a hard time not shivering every time the wind blows in the anticipation that he will shift into a wolf again. He is a boy, a real boy, with a future ahead of him. He slowly starts to accept the cure may have actually stuck and learns to try to look past tomorrow and into a real future with Grace.

While Grace's parents have always been absent to a degree, they suddenly have an opinion on every aspect of her life. The main one being their opinion of Sam. Sam is becoming less and less welcomed in Grace's parents house. They feel her life is basically revolving around him.

Sam can't run from the wolf he was. He has to start taking responsibility for the pack, because he is the only one who can. He will always be tied to them, and with Beck gone, it's Sam role to play as guardian now.

Grace and Sam finally start planning a future, but within one night everything changes. It becomes a constant struggle just to be together. Everything seems to be trying to tear them apart. Whether it be her parents refusing to let her ever see Sam again, or the thing that is inside of Grace trying to claw its way out.

"Because you know that's not how you want it to end. You know I'd love to have you with me, and it will be that way, one day. But this isn't the way it ought to happen."

OPINION:
The book of the summer. Excellent, touching, sad and so romantic. Maggie's writing is so beautiful, lyrical and poetic.

The story is told in four POV's this time. Besides Sam and Grace, we get to hear the story from Isabel and Cole.

Cole is one of the new wolves. I found him intriguing. He is complex and I just wanted to know more and more about him. I hope he has a big role in book 3.

I didn't really care for Isabel. I started to like her, but that didn't last very long. I know deep down she's good and all, but I don't like the way she talks to Sam. I did like her with Cole, though.

I finally got to learn Sam's middle name. That has been driving me crazy. It's on page 131.

The whole book was a superb read. I just loved it. I found it hard not to just sit down and devour it, but I made myself slow down and just enjoy it. We have to wait a whole year to get book 3 anyway.

If you haven't read Shiver I think Linger still could be picked right up because the love between Grace and Sam just flows off the pages. But read Shiver if you haven't. Now go read it, listen to it on audio book, request it from your library!!! I think I might have to get the audio book also because Maggie said the person who narrates for Cole sounds like "sex- on- a- stick" and I think I'd like to know what that sounds like.

SOME OF MY FAVORITE QUOTES FROM LINGER:

"It was something that made the I love yous real." page 96

"To Grace, these were the things that mattered: my hand on her cheeks, my lips on
her mouth. The fleeting touches that meant I loved her." page 98

"Without turning on the light, I went to my bed and lay down, my arm thrown across the mattress, my hand aching because Grace wasn't underneath it." page 165

"I couldn't imagine anyone ever reading a book enough to make it look like that. It looked like it had been driven over by a school bus after someone had taken a bath with it." page 192-193

"Not dead-dying. Funny how two things could be so similar and yet so far apart." page 215

"There was something awful about terror trapped behind silence." page 216

"....she made her home in between the pages of books." page 338