Shiver

Content Warning: This section of the guide contains discussions of violence and trauma and depictions of parental neglect and abuse.

Grace, one of Maggie Stiefvater’s dual first-person narrators, is 17 years old in the novel’s present-day timeline. Grace describes herself as the “embodiment of winter—dark blonde hair and serious brown eyes” (34). According to her boyfriend, Sam, Grace is “the most beautiful girl [he’s] ever seen” (4). Bitten by werewolves when she was a child, Grace has developed extra-sharp hearing and sense of smell, as well as an ability to heal rapidly. However, she never transformed into a wolf, which makes her an anomaly among the other werewolves in the novel’s universe. Grace loves to read—particularly history and other nonfiction—and often spends hours immersed in books in her backyard. Grace defines herself as practical, while her mother uncharitably calls her a “tank” who just “chug(s) along” (239). Elsewhere, Grace’s mother expresses her disappointment that, unlike her, Grace is not interested in art, but only in numbers and the workings of things. However, what Grace’s mother refers to as Grace’s normalcy, Stiefvater frames as a combination of keen intelligence and resourcefulness. Grace doesn’t lose her head in stressful situations and battles her own fears and doubts to come to others’ aid.