** spoiler alert ** 
 I HAVE FINALLY FINISHED THIS BOOK. 
 I must now seek to change my review. After completing Shiver, I have made the monumental decision to change my rating from three stars to four. I don't do that very often. I barely do it at all. Once I've decided something is shit, then it's shit. But for some reason, this book was the exception to the rule. Weird! 
 Anyway. We have to start at the beginning. That's where most things start (unless you're Quentin Tarantino. Or...something. What?) 
 First things first: the prose. 
 So there were a few passages in which the prose just blew by effortlessly, and was so beautiful that I could hardly believe this was actually YA; Mags has this wonderful knack for immersing her reader right into her setting, particularly during the snowy scenes. I'm pretty sure I wasn't the only one who actually felt cold while I was reading this book, and could see the forest as if I were walking through it. 
 But alas, this doesn't last. It's tragic, really. Mags has this rare way with words, yet every so often there's this huge chunk of awful flowery description or cheesy dialogue or crappy poetry that's just painful to slog through. Like, I can handle an author just missing the mark. If something's bad, it's just bad. But corniness is too much. Corniness is bad for the cholesterol. 
 I can kinda forgive this, though, when we meet Grace. Okay, granted, this girl has some issues with falling in love with actual animals, but bestiality aside, Grace is pretty cool. She's tough, resilient, intelligent, independent. She dances in her kitchen and loves to cook and walk in the woods and she reads. It's all very Starbucks hipster, but what can I say? I eat that shit up. Give me a green tea frapp, grande, and I'll be on my way. 
 Then we have Sam. 
 Okay, so at first his lyrics were freaking awful, and just an annoyance, but toward the end...they weren't half bad. Really. And even if they were, it doesn't fucking matter, because he's just so utterly lovable and fresh and dark and beautiful and I just cannot with him. I cannot. You know how so many authors do that thing where they give their characters a "tragic past" and they try to make it sad and heart-wrenching but all it really is, is either white guy problems or so utterly ridiculous and melodramatic that it ends up being kind of funny? Well, Sam's not like that. He's actually tragic. Really, properly tragic. And it's refreshingly sad. 
 (I'll admit that there were times when his voice kind of faded into Grace's and we ended up with Gram not Sam, but that was sporadic enough for me to wave it away.) 
 The essence of this book is just how intensely emotional it is. It's been written with so much care and devotion, filled with so much love. That love translates to Grace and Sam's, so much so that it brought out the sappy crying mess in me. When I thought Sam and Grace had lost each other, it was like Fluke all over again. (Fuck that movie.) 
 Now, normally I'm not a fan of books that leave me in a blubbery mess in the middle of my media class, but this was an exception. Seriously. I'm no more a fan of werewolves than I am dead rats, but this book just changed me. 
 So, you're thinking the obvious question: why didn't you finish it the first time around? 
 Because after the first ten or so chapters, it got so mind numbingly boring that I could feel my life fading away as I forced myself to read. 
 I tried. Really, I did. At first, it was great. And in the end, it was great. But the middle was a Greek tragedy. It dragged and dragged and dragged and dragged and dragged and dragged until I became angry at myself for keeping on going. Eventually I gave up, and after a month away from it started to hate myself for being a quitter. It was a weird feeling; I'm okay with quitting. Quitting is fine. If you feet yourself wasting time and energy trying to do something that you're never going to succeed at, why quit? 
 But I knew I could get through this. I knew I just needed another run at it. So I sat down and forced myself through the endless pit of nothingness that was the Rising Action section and it paid off. See? Sometimes even stuff that seems kind of shitty on the outside and for the most part can actually turn out pretty good in the end. 
 (Minor peeve: It bothered me that no one gave a rat's ass about Jack's death. Granted, he was a bastard for most of the book, but wouldn't you be if you'd just found yourself on the wrong side of a life sentence?) 
 I feel kinda bad for criticizing Shiver. I do. There really were some absolutely glorious things about this book. For example, a line that gave me genuine goosebumps: 
 "She was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen, a tiny, bloody angel in the snow, and they were going to destroy her." 
 Isn't that just gorgeous? Grace and Sam's love was so palpable that by the end I yearned for them to be together. Sure, Grace sniffing Sam's armpits is kind of weird, but couples love that gross shit. Plus, the sex scene was absolutely lovely. Hurrah for some sex-positivity! 
 In a nutshell? This book is a rare, beautiful piece of YA literature, and having just bought the sequel, Linger, I'm pretty eager to find out what the heck happens next. 
 Maggie Stiefvater, I think I love you. 
 (Sorry.) 
 BONUS TIME! 
 Take a look at this awesome stop-motion book trailer created by Maggie herself. Isn't it gorgeous?