Forever
(The Wolves of Mercy Falls #3)
Maggie Stiefvater
Published July 12, 2011
ARC Received from Scholastic Press
The thrilling conclusion to #1 bestselling Shiver trilogy from Maggie Stievater
In Maggie Stiefvater’s Shiver, Grace and Sam found each other. In Linger, they fought to be together. Now, in Forever, the stakes are even higher than before. Wolves are being hunted. Lives are being threatened. And love is harder and harder to hold on to as death comes closing in. –Goodreads
I read this book back in JULY when it came out. I don’t know why it has taken me so long to review it. I enjoyed it. Even though I did have a few issues with the book as a whole.
This review might contain spoilers for the first two books in the series, so if you haven’t read those proceed with caution!
I love Maggie Stiefvater’s writing style. There is just something beautiful and lyrical about the way she writes. She manages to draw the reader into the story not with breathtaking action and adventure but with heartbreakingly beautiful characters that are struggling to find themselves. Grace, Sam, Isabel, and Cole are such dramatically different people with dramatically different problems. One problem I did have was that the book was written from so many POVs which took away from the flow of the story.
Even though the books started off with Sam and Grace as the main characters, in Forever the focus shifts a little more and now Isabel and Cole are just as important to the storyline. I, for one, love Isabel and Cole’s stories. They are both completely different and heartbreaking. Cole is struggling to find a reason why he is still alive and Isabel is struggling to just find herself. They are both hard and jaded – and begin to realize they need each other more than they thought. I really love their story and think that Stiefvater could have written a completely new series based off these two characters instead of compressing it into Forever and Linger. As much as I love Cole and Isabel, I missed the story being more about Sam and Grace – these are the characters we fell in love with in Shiver and I would have liked to see Forever focus more on them and the end of their story.
Overall, I enjoyed the ending of the Shiver trilogy. It was not my favorite book in the series but Stiefvater wraps up the story in a way that is overall satisfying for the reader.