Wisty! Whit! New Order! Magic! Ahhh, Fire! Prison! Dead girlfriend! Escape! Look a puppy! A.D.D. anyone??? I seriously think that James Patterson and/or Gabrielle Charbonnet are card-carrying members of A.D.D. Anonymous because that’s what reading their sorcery-slash-dystopia novel, Witch & Wizard was like with its 300 pages and about 100-ish chapters! In it, a smart aleck-y 15 year old girl, Wisty Allgood, and her older brother, Whit, are fugitives of the New Order, a newly elected but suppressive political regime that is absolutely con-witch/wizardry. This administration completely changes the world while everyone is asleep one night. …seriously…

Wisty and Whit are unaware of their supernatural abilities until the New Order comes to arrest them for it and Wisty burst into flames. Neat trick, huh? They are eventually overcome and thrown into prison where they have time to explore their new abilities. It also becomes evident during this time that the leader of the New Order holds a personal vendetta against the Allgood family as a whole. Despite the efforts of their “Nurse Ratched” type guards, they escape with the help of Whit’s dead girlfriend (yes, I said dead…she’s a ghost). While attempting to find & save their parents, they encounter group of teenage revolutionaries who are surviving in a holocaust type world. They believe the bewitched duo to be mystical entities and also prophets who will use their power to restore harmony and overcome the New Order.

The cast of characters are potentially colorful but are not completely developed. Examples of the more robust players include the evil “The One Who Is The One” that leads the New Order who has a foreboding and all knowing persona. And then there is Byron, a former schoolmate who is eventually turned into a weasel for witnessing the powers of the siblings and threatening to nark them out. There is also Whit’s dead girlfriend’s ghost, Celia, who helps them escape prison where they are made to run through a hallway lined with hell hounds for their supper. Finally! A diet that works!

The super short, 3 – 4 page chapters and constant switching between Wisty’s and Whit’s perspectives depicted blinky-type thoughts that never really amount to anything substantial. It was like watching a hyper 8 year old bounce around Santa’s workshop. The end result is a lack of depth that keeps the reader from creating a clear picture of the settings. This did, however, allow for an action-packed read with few lulls in the storyline.

So, while this was a suspenseful and vigorous tale, my mature hottie side was left completely ignored and I felt like I had whiplash from the rapid fire micro-chapters switching between thoughts at lightning speed. I also feel that the authors were writing to a strictly middle school aged audience. I would seriously doubt that our fantastically sexy fans could be intellectually (or otherwise, OWW) stimulated by this venture! 3 pumps outta 5, says The Vixen That Reviews!

Are you on the Team Jacob side of the fence? If so, you were on my mind when I picked up this book! But unless you are completely obsessed with wolves and enjoy uninteresting characters, I doubt you will become fascinated by this storyline. Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater is based on your average boy-meets-girl scenario. Except the boy, Sam, is a beautiful yellow-eyed werewolf, and the girl, Grace, is the most boring character to enter the world of text!

This young adult book begins when Grace is attacked by a pack of wolves as a child. She is taken into the woods where the pack proceeds with what appears to be an attempt to kill her. To my disappointment, they are stopped when teen-wolf Sam carries her to safety. Grace eventually recovers from the attack and comes to know Sam as “her yellow-eyed wolf” who protectively watches her from the woods behind her house. The mundane back and forth stares between these two continue for what feels like forever with an occasional touch of fur sprinkled in for good measure. Yawn… exciting stuff, huh?

However, one day it is rumored that Grace’s classmate has been killed by the wolves, so a hunting party gathers to take down the wolf pack and, of course, Sam is caught in the cross-fire. Sam shifts into human form and finds himself naked and injured on Grace’s back porch. And I’ll just warn you, it took 60 pages to get to this part! Chinese water torture is more appealing than struggling through pages and pages of lackluster plot! C’mon Mags where’s your creative bone, girl??

Anyway, after Sam shifts into a human, naturally he and Grace fall in love. What’s not to love? He’s smart, creative, and oh-so-sexy! And this Vixen has to give it to Grace for snagging some sweet lovins from her wolf boy when the situation popped up! Get it? Popped up?? As a side note, I am very proud to reveal that I read this part of the book twice! Oww! And because Grace has parents that barely notice her, she does everything she can to keep Sam in human form. You see, when the cold temperatures arrive, the werewolves “shed” their human form by shivering and remain in the woods until the warmer season returns. Yet, readers learn that Sam won’t be turning back into a human again. So Grace and Sam do everything they can to hold onto each other and their love.

Unfortunately, even in the good parts, I believe that Stiefvater failed to capture the audience with her narrative. She could’ve had a great novel under her belt, but she missed out on so much, which made the storyline just slightly okay. I give Shiver 2 ½ pumps. I’m taking one away for Grace and her lame-ass-ness; another away for the mind-numbing supporting characters I didn’t care about; and half of a pump away for the plot that barely maintained enough spark to keep me reading.