Review: Sinner (The Wolves of Mercy Falls 3.5)

Reviewer: Kelsey
Author: Maggie Stiefvater
Format: ebook
Pages: 368 (?) (My ereader is on the otherside of the room and if you think I'm getting up to check the page count you are so very wrong. This page count via a random edition of this book on Goodreads)
Rating: 7 out of 10

Summary (Love Goodreads): A standalone companion book to the internationally bestselling Shiver Trilogy. 

Sinner follows Cole St. Clair, a pivotal character from the #1 New York Times bestselling Shiver Trilogy. Everybody thinks they know Cole's story. Stardom. Addiction. Downfall. Disappearance. But only a few people know Cole's darkest secret -- his ability to shift into a wolf. One of these people is Isabel. At one point, they may have even loved each other. But that feels like a lifetime ago. Now Cole is back. Back in the spotlight. Back in the danger zone. Back in Isabel's life. Can this sinner be saved?

Thoughts: I read The Wolves of Mercy Falls about a million years ago in book time so I hardly remembered it. This series made me want to go back to the series. I think I will right before school starts. I remembered that I liked them a lot (except that the font matched the cover colours and that drove me bonkers). You don't really need to remember much about the series to read this novel. The 3.5 suggests that it's a novella but I was happy to find out that it was a full length novel. The numbering is really screwy...

It was nice to be back into the world in which the story took place. I mean, the setting was different and there were only a few characters carried over but still. I thought that it was very well written and the characters were sufficiently fleshed out. It reminded me why I loved this author so much...so I bought a few more of her novels...

The only problem I really had with it was that I may have read it too fast. It seemed to jump a little bit. I honestly believe that this was my own fault, not the author's. It seemed stretched out at times. Again, probably an interpretation problem.

There were many times when I wanted to punch Cole in the face. I would have liked to get a little bit more of the emotion behind his character though. I could follow what was happening and why it was but I want to hear more about it from his perspective. I thought the ending was too fast, too sudden for me. This is basically the problem I had with Cole. Give me just a little bit more of a glimpse into Isabel's thought process here.Any issues I had with this, I think would be corrected a little bit by reading this novel right after rereading The Wolves of Mercy Falls because you would already have a solid idea of the state of mind of the two main characters.

If you read the rest of the series it makes sense to continue on with this novel. If you haven't this novel has some potential to be a stand alone, I guess. I'm not sure how much you will take from it without the previous novels but that's up to you. I recommend that you read the main series before reading this...like closely before... enjoy!