Lindsay's Review: Forever (The Wolves of Mercy Falls #3) by Maggie Stiefvater

Forever by Maggie Stiefvater
Series: The Wolves of Mercy Falls #3
Genre: Young Adult, Fantasy, Werewolves
Rating: ★★★★
Pages: 388
Published by Scholastic Press on July 12th, 2011
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then. When Sam met Grace, he was a wolf and she was a girl. Eventually he found a way to become a boy, and their loved moved from curious distance to the intense closeness of shared lives.

now. That should have been the end of their story. But Grace was not meant to stay human. Now she is the wolf. And the wolves of Mercy Falls are about to be killed in one final, spectacular hunt.

forever. Sam would do anything for Grace. But can one boy and one love really change a hostile, predatory world? The past, the present, and the future are about to collide in one pure moment - a moment of death or life, farewell or forever.

Why do we read? We read to immerse ourselves into a new world, to fall in love with characters we will never meet, and to enjoy ourselves along the way. And that's exactly what I got while reading this series, and especially Forever.

The book started off a bit slower than usual, especially with all the things that went down at the end of Linger, the second book. And despite how much I've defended the pace of the entire series, I think that Steifvater got a bit sloppy in this book with pacing throughout the whole story. The content, for the most part, was perfect, however not only the slow start bugged me, but the timeline in which things were happening.

Now I warn you, from here on out, there will be big and little spoilers alike. Read at your own discretion.

When doing a timeline through a book, I feel like if you're counting down to something bad, you're characters should be stressed, maybe even freaking out - especially freaking out if their friends might die, which in this book, was the case. But as time progressed, I didn't find the tension rising. It wasn't until the very end that there was so much happening all at once, amazing, but jumbled together in a nothing-built-up-to-this-very-much-and-now-all-this-is-happening-at-once kind of way.

However, despite the pacing, the content was excellent as always, and I couldn't help but get sucked right into Mercy Falls, knowing the place so well with the pictures in my head that I felt like it was a place I actually visited in real life.

The series, as a whole, is one I'm really glad I got around to reading. It was cute and sad and wonderful all at once. The Sam-Grace moments, the angry Grace moments, the Cole-Isabel moments and the Sam-Beck ones. Every one touched me and I really felt like I knew these people.

And even though I was unsure about Cole, I fell in love with him as a character who was lost but redeeming himself. In the end - huge spoiler here- when I thought he was dead, I was so close to bawling that I felt like I wasn't breathing. I hate to admit it, but I speed-read just to find out what happened to him and when he was alive, I wanted to cheesy fist pump freeze-frame in the air like all those 80's movies. So yes, if this book can make me do that, it is definitely worth a read. But I must warn you, do not have expectations, or it will ruin your read. Go in knowing nothing, and I can promise it will be a great read.