I am large, I contain multitudes

It's hard to describe Marcus Sedgwick's "Midwinterblood" in any other terms other than possibly one of the most amazing books I've read in a long time. Pardon me for being blunt. I tried coming up with some sort of cute/interesting intro to lead up to my review but nothing seemed to fit. There is absolutely no way to introduce it outside of it being amazing. At this point I'm not even sure how to describe the plot of the book and what happens without spoiling massive quantities of it; everything is connected to everything else in some deep way. The best way to describe it would be with a small quote from the book:

It cannot be... that when our life is run, we are done. There must be more to man than that, surely? That we are not just one, but a multitude. (p. 250)

So it is that on a small Scandavian island where the mythical Dracula orchid grows, Eric and Merle, two souls in love, find then lose each other over and over and over again. Seven different stories weave together their tale of love surviving through the ages, through vampires and magic and war, going back to a time unrecorded by history. Only at the very end does the whole story become completely clear.  Only then do you see the end that is really the beginning.

~The Stacked Librarian

P.S. The title of the blog post is a Walt Whitman quote. It's from "Song of Myself." If you like Whitman, definitely read this book!

A Winter's Tale

When Grace was eleven, she was attacked by a pack of wolves. They dragged her into the snowy forest of Mercy Falls, Minnesota, and she would surely have died if not for the intervention of one particular wolf. For the six years since she has been obsessed with him, following every movement of his pack as they roam the woods near her home.

Sam has been a werewolf for most of his life. However, it isn't the moon that dictates his form, but the temperature--in winter he's a wolf, in summer he's a boy, and he's been in love with Grace ever since he rescued her that cold day years before. But how can he ever tell her, especially when he only has one year left before he becomes a wolf permanently?

Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater is a haunting, lyrical story that takes star-crossed lovers to an entirely new level--one where the lines that separate good from evil are constantly blurring, and humans can be just as cruel as the monsters they fear.