Review: Forever

Forever by Maggie Stiefvater

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



Once again, I think Cole and Isabelle saved this book series.

This time, I took an unfortunate week off of listening to this audiobook while I was on Spring Break. Without my Ridiculous Commute (TM) to and from work, I had no reason to listen, so I took a break in the early part of Disk 8. That break wound up being a problem, as it interupted the emotional connection I had with the book. By the time I listened to the last disks last night and this morning, I kept waiting impatiently for Cole and Isabelle to narrate, and I was getting impatient with them, too. After having taken a break from the book, when I went back to it, Cole's voice seemed too sly at times and it didn't sit well with my understanding of his character. Sam and Grace, as always, were just a little to earnest.

A long time ago, I read a short story in [b:Tales of the Witch World Volume 3]. In the headnote to that story, the author explained how she got stuck while writing it. Unable to get the story moving, she resorted to an old writing trick and inserted a character that was just as disgusted with the events as the story as she was. Cole and Isabelle serve that function in the Shiver stories. While Sam and Grace's story is great in the first book, their constancy and devotion gets wearying to read. While I did find Grace's parents despicable, I almost sympathized with them for forbidding Grace to see Sam. They had their own reasons for doing so, but I thought that the fact that he made their daughter boring was perhaps one of them. Cole and Isabelle are the cynical foils to Sam and Grace's sweetness. As a critic once said of Fanny and Edmund in[b:Mansfield Park|45032|Mansfield Park|Jane Austen|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1309203298s/45032.jpg|2722329], I'd hate to go a dinner party at their house. Cole and Isabelle, on the other hand, would host great get-togethers.



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