Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater(Scholastic, 13+)
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
The most fitting into that Twilight sort of genre of anything I'm likely to recommend on this blog. It's a love story with werewolves. And the love story is slightly like something you've seen before: boy watches girl from afar before circumstances align for them to interact face to face. It's Edward Cullen, it's Angel, it's Stefan Salvatore, or Bill Compton or any of those vampire guys. But Sam's a werewolf, and not your average werewolf at that. Stiefvater's werewolves aren't ruled by the moon or able to change of their own volition, their physical state depends on the temperature out. When it's cold is when they turn into wolves, and they spend the entirety of the winter months in that state. Respectively they spend the summer as humans, however as time goes on they turn into wolves more and more easily until they spend all of their time that way. And moving to a warmer climate would only make it worse.
So Sam watches Grace from afar, aware that his situation would make being together impossible. Especially since we find out that Grace has been bitten by a werewolf but never changed, so her becoming a werewolf is equally impossible.
The writing is lovely, the story is interesting and although there is a sequel, Linger, and an upcoming conclusion to the trilogy, Forever, I actually really loved Shiver as a one-shot. I bought Linger, but it just continues to chill on my bookshelf waiting to be read.
Alternately we next come to two of my very favorite young adult trilogies ever.
The Summoning by Kelley Armstrong(HarperCollins, 12+)
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I first started reading Kelley Armstrong many years ago when my coworkers at Walden ooks convinced me to pick up Bitten, the first in her Women of the Otherworld series and as solid a piece of adult paranormal fiction as they come. But as these things usually do, her more recent entries in the series haven't been as good as her early efforts. The complete opposite is true of her young adult work. Not only is it better than her current adult novels, each book in the Darkest Powers Trilogy is better than the previous one.
It actually took me a minute before I picked up The Summoning because from reading the blurb it seemed to skew a little younger than I was feeling at the moment. (Although being twenty-five in the YA section, who knows where I'm going with that thought.) But Chloe is a realistic fifteen-year-old who does a lot of growing up during the series. Oh, and she's also a necromancer as we find out during the course of the books.
The series is populated with werewolves, ghosts, witches, a large conspiracy theory, many characters you don't know whether to trust or not and a really well-done teenage love triangle. I mean, I know who I was pulling for, but I had a real question as to which she'd go for.
The Awakening by Kelley Armstrong(HarperCollins, 12+)
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
The Reckoning by Kelley Armstrong(HarperCollins, 12+)
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
The second trilogy in the series starts this year with the upcoming The Gathering, and while I'm sad that Chloe's story is at an end, I appreciate Armstrong's willingness to take on another character so as not to wear the first one out, as she did with the Otherworld series (which, for the curious, takes place in the same universe).
A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray(Delacorte Books for Young Readers, 13+)
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Libba Bray's first novel introduces us to Gemma Doyle, the titular character of the trilogy. Gemma is in Mary Lennox-like circumstances when her mother dies and she's removed from her beloved India and replaced into Victorian England. This book encompasses the historical with the fantastical, a portal story as well as a paranormal one, and throws it into a Victorian boarding school where the girls are as much teenage, and often mean, girls as any contemporary YA story. Oh yeah, and there's a love interest too.
I'm going to have a problem genuinely reviewing this series, cause I just adore it so much. Let me just say, it has everything, is well-written and made me cry. And I cry very rarely. (Pretty much only at that one scene in Gone With the Wind with Mammy and Melanie talking on the stairs. And also Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. But only the first time.)
Basically if you enjoy any of the sorts of stories I mentioned, you have to read this. Double if you are or ever have been a teenage girl.
Rebel Angels by Libba Bray(Delacorte Books for Young Readers, 13+)
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
The Sweet Far Thing by Libba Bray(Delacorte Books for Young Readers, 13+)
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
