Forever

Maggie Stiefvater (author)

Scholastic Press, USA: Australian release August 2011; 386pp

ISBN: 9780545259088

Genres: adventure, fantasy, romance

Issues: environment, friendship, family, identity

Sam spends his days waiting for summer and the heat that will bring Grace back to him. When she sheds her lupine form Grace finds that life has become even more complicated.

Sam is suspected of killing her best friend. The community's hostility towards him has been further fuelled by Grace's disappearance and the absence of Sam's stepfather. While the mercurial Cole works to understand the biological nature of the werewolf infection in hopes of finding Grace a cure, Isabel's father is using his considerable power and influence to get permission to exterminate the pack. Sam and Grace just want to enjoy every one of their very limited precious moments together. Instead they must find a way to protect the wolves, clear Sam's name and convince Grace's parents that she's still alive but not theirs to control.

The final book in the Wolves of Mercy Falls trilogy draws the reader even further into the complex interrelationships between community, environment and the characters that Stiefvater has created. Mercy Falls, with its astonishing natural beauty and unspoilt wilderness is home to as parochial a group of middle-class Americans as any writer can create. The battle between the endangered wolves and the humans who resent and fear them is both an ancient and a modern conflict. By adding the human (werewolf) factor, Stiefvater challenges her readers to reconsider the situation, weaving a strong ecological and environmental subtext into an already absorbing and thought-provoking narrative.

Stiefvater's resolution to this remarkable series is particularly impressive because she manages to please the reader whilst avoiding trite or clichéd conclusions. Having used the three books to explore the nature of love through difficult parental and family relationships, friendship and young love, Stiefvater has deepened this to examine the personal growth required to achieve a healthy romantic relationship. Sam and Grace are held up as the model that others strive to emulate. The strength of who they are as people and the depth of their connection inspires Cole's personal journey, his attempts to become less self-centred and self-destructive, to let go of his past and become the best he can be. That Stiefvater leaves Cole's development unfinished is a great strength as she reminds readers that life's journey is only over when we die. (Mind you, it also leaves her a thread for a new series should she choose to revisit Mercy Falls in the future!)

A very satisfying final act, Forever is a testament to Stiefvater's gifts as a writer: lyrical prose, a cast of complex, interesting characters, and an astonishing ability to craft a dramatic, tense narrative.

Truly a writer to watch.

'I found Sam leaning on the front porch railing, a long, dark form barely visible in the night. It was funny how Sam, with just the curve of his shoulders and the way he ducked his chin, could convey so much emotion. Even for someone like me, someone who thought a smile was a smile was a smile, it was easy to see the frustration and sadness in the line of his back, the bend of his left knee, the way one of his slender feet was rolled on its side.' (p145)

'It was a beautiful day, no sign of rain for the first time in a week. The sky was the dreamy, high blue of summer, months early, and the leaves of the trees looked one thousand colours of green, from electric, plastic shades to a hair lighter than black.' (p197)

Warning: death of key characters; some violence; death of animals

Series: Shiver; Linger