Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater

All I have to say is step aside Twilight. You got nothing on Shiver.

Shiver is what Twilight should have been; a supernatural teen romance about a girl and a mythical creature, in this book a werewolf, falling irrevocably and hopelessly in love. Only this book is written concisely, without any of the mistakes and jarringly bad writing that haunted the insanely popular aforementioned title...you know...the one with the apple on the cover. This book can be ingested easily in a day and that's a good thing. Nothing will distract you from Grace's predicament...her feeling that she's not exactly of this world, but not completely connected with the wolves that have obsessed her since she was bitten by them when she was a child. The narrative switches back and forth between Grace and Sam, the wolf who haunts the woods near Grace's house...watching over her in case she turns into a creature like him and slowly falling in love with her over 6 years of waiting.

The non-conventional werewolves in this book are all believable characters along with all the other characters in the book. The adults are of course predictably absent (like pretty much all of children's literature) and Grace and her two best friends are refreshingly not stereotypical teenagers. Sam's habit of thinking in poetry is not as saccharine as it sounds due to the fact that he tries endearingly to add guitar chords and write songs (when he's in human form) and Grace's cooking makes perfect sense when you learn how absent her parents really are.

Don't peak at the last page. I didn't quite cry, but it was close.

Really. Don't peak.