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** Spoiler Alert **

“Once upon a time, there was a girl named Grace Brisbane. There was nothing particularly special about her, except that she was good with numbers, very good at lying, and she made her home in between the pages of books. She loved all the wolves behind her house, but she loved one of them most of all.” (338)

Ladies and gentlemen, your heroine. Like a fine wine reduction, drain all the fluids/blood from her body (literally), and this is what she boils down to. Unlike a fine wine reduction, not exactly awesomesauce.

Four characters narrate this story: Grace, Sam, Isabel, and Cole. One of these things is not like the other. We have Sam, the haunted former wolf who must learn to be human and make peace with what his parents did to him. We have Cole, former frontman of a prominent band, wrestling with suicidal tendencies and a desire to be all wolf, all the time. We have Isabel, still reeling from her brother’s tragic death in Shiver.

And then we have Grace, the blank slate who, ultimately, steers this ship. This is her story, despite the split narrative attention to make us believe otherwise. The problem? She is, by far, the weakest character. It is by the grace (pun totally intended) of the three other characters that I gave this book three stars. They’re all so much more compelling. I would read an Isabel book.

But everyone loves Grace. Cole falls all over himself upon first meeting her, declaring that he “would do anything to be her friend and earn that smile again” (282). Earn that smile? Does it bestow blessings and good health? Does it solve differential equations? Does it cure nebulous werewolf diseases? Let’s not even mention how awful he is to Isabel, who apparently isn’t as amazing as Grace. In fact, he tells us, “She didn’t look disgusted, like Isabel had” (282)–effectively setting up Isabel as the heavy. A few paragraphs earlier, he also tells us exactly what he sees in Grace: “She was pretty in an undramatic way, and she had this great voice: very plain and matter-of-fact and distinctive.” Yikes. The reader needs something more to grab onto than this–Grace being vaguely pretty, having a great voice, and earning high marks in math and lying.

Also, when pondering Grace’s illness, Sam emphasizes that “Grace was the only one of her kind” (336). Of course. Always. Just like Bella (**Twilight spoiler alert**) was the only vampire to skip the painful transition period.

Also, like Bella, Grace contorts herself every which way to be with her supernatural boy wonder. She starts listening to alternative music, which she hates, because Sam likes it. She crosses college off her New Year’s resolution list rather flippantly so that she can shack up with him after high school and have a red coffeepot (I’m not making this up). She runs away from home to be with him after her unfair parents won’t let him sleep in her bed anymore. As much as I hated her parents, let’s get real–there is nothing normal/healthy about these Romeo-and-Juliet nightly sleepovers that have taken the YA romance market by storm.

By the end, I actually thought that Grace was going to die. This would have made sense, strangely. So many of the final scenes between Sam and Grace feel valedictory, as if building toward her death. If this story weren’t trapped in the “trilogy” mindset, maybe it would have gone down that way. Instead, she becomes a wolf in the hospital (thanks to Cole’s saliva–imminent love triangle, anyone?) and takes off for more coniferous pastures.

Not that Grace’s becoming a wolf is without storyline potential. It’s a pretty fitting reversal, and the only logical conclusion given that this is a trilogy. But her becoming a wolf means that she must rely on the men to find a cure. Grace is a good student. She’s smart. If this is her story, which I believe it to be, why couldn’t she be the one to find the cure? Why must she be the one who needs rescuing? Why couldn’t she be a Katniss (Hunger Games Trilogy) instead of a Bella (The Twilight Tetralogy )? Of course, I’m making a lot of assumptions about the third book, but the saga seems to be making a beeline toward Sam and Cole finding a cure so that everyone can live happily ever after. It would be awesomesauce if the third book proved me wrong. What I liked about Shiver was that it was the boy who needed rescuing for once.

A question: Why are all of the parents in this saga so terrible? We have Sam’s parents, who tried to murder him in a bathtub; Isabel’s trigger-happy, wolf-killing father; and Grace’s parents, who have straight-up neglected her for years and suddenly decide to try being parental in this book (with disastrous results). At least in Twilight, we had that paragon of parental win otherwise known as Charlie.

Now, for some quote-specific issues:

“‘This is why you are single’” (65) — Really, Grace? This is how you speak to your best friend? Funnier yet, she says this to Rachel simply because she’s acting a little goofy, a little offbeat–a little, I don’t know, herself? Also, is it a good idea to make teenage girls think that being single is a bad thing?

That said, Rachel can be somewhat over-the-top. A bit obscure, but when she refers to Isabel as “she-of-the-pointy-boots” (313), I was reminded of the annoying Damian Spinelli on General Hospital (yes, I used to watch soaps). He used to use similar nomenclature (and probably still does).

There are some clichés in here, most of which I overlooked, but “dark as pitch” (279) is one of my top 3 simile no-nos. Just don’t do it.

There are things that Maggie Stiefvater does really well. I give her major kudos for making Sam likable when so many other YA paranormal romance authors are cultivating harsh, abusive heroes. As I mentioned earlier, Sam, Cole, and Isabel are quite well-developed. The weak link for me, again, is Grace herself.