Linger by Maggie Stiefvater

The Wolves of Mercy Falls #2

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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.
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.
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Linger isn't quite as good as Shiver, book one in the series. I felt a bit more distanced to the happenings, waiting for something monumental to take place. There's been this build-up to something, you're not quite sure what, and the majority of the book has come and gone before it actually gets somewhere. However, because I came to care so much for the characters in the first book, book 2 had me in a solid grip and I was reluctant to not read on whenever I had to put it down.

Like the first, it is very well written and engaging and the characters are a joy to follow. The thoughts and transformation of new guy Cole was really good and I loved how Isabel has become a far more complex human-being with a ton of emotions she doesn't even understand how to deal with herself.

For me, the plot twist was expected, but I loved the execution of it and on another note it was also very satisfactory to finally "see" Grace stand up to her useless parents (though moronic as they are of course they just don't get it).

Thinking about it, it doesn't really span much more than a few weeks or so and most of the important stuff, just a few days, and we never leave the familiar surroundings of book 1. However, that just goes to show that you don't need a huge varying scenery for your puppets to put on a play. Small and known can be just as fulfilling for big events.

360 pages / published in 2010
Review by Iben Jakobsen, BoB, 2011