Wolves of Mercy Falls Series
Wolves of Mercy Falls is a book trilogy written by Maggie Stiefvater which takes place in Mercy Falls, Minnesota.
At the start of Shiver, Grace is bitten by the wolves that live behind her house, but she is saved by a different wolf with mysterious yellow eyes. After that incident, Grace becomes obsessed with the wolves; more specifically, her yellow-eyed wolf.
The yellow-eyed wolf, however, lives a double life. During the winter, he is an animal wandering through the forest, but when summer arrives, Sam and all the other wolves behind Grace's house turn human.
The second book, Linger, was published in July 2010. The conclusion, Forever, was released in July 2011.
Tropes used in Wolves of Mercy Falls Series include:
- Abusive Parents: All of them. Sam's parents take the cake (See Moral Event Horizon, below), but Grace's should've been put away for neglect long ago. Also Shelby's parents, and possibly the Culpepers as well.
- Alpha Bitch: Isabel starts off as this.
- Ambition Is Evil: Shelby
- Calling the Old Man Out: Grace does this to her parents Once A Book.
- Crowning Moment of Funny: Sam's response to being asked what he eats as a wolf.
- The fact that Rachel calls Sam "The Boy". Also, her reaction when Grace moves out.
- Isabel and Cole's first meeting.
- In Forever, Sam tries to get Rachel to hop in his car (because Grace, hiding in the back, wants to speak to her), but they have to argue about it because she thinks he's going to abduct her.
- Deus Ex Machina / Contrived Coincidence: So, wait, our new ally Officer Koenig just happens to have inherited a tract of land which is absolutely perfect for relocating the pack? Really?
- Diabolus Ex Machina: In an unusual form: a deer.
- Downer Ending: The end of Linger undoes everything the protaganists tried to accomplish in Shiver, only mixing it up by having Grace turn into the wolf.
- Dropped a Bridge on Him: The girl Shelby kills in the opening of Forever? Olivia, absent since the end of Shiver. We don't find out it's her until later.
- Earn Your Happy Ending
- Eyes of Gold: Sam in both human and wolf form.
- Fake-Out Make-Out: Cole and Isabel in Forever.
- Follow the Leader: Then again, it does help the surge of human/non-human romance craze started by Twilight.
- Food Porn: The description of the candy shop in Shiver may make you drool.
- Freudian Excuse: Shelby has one.
- Genki Girl: Grace's friend Rachel.
- Hands-Off Parenting: Grace's parents. Her mom cares more about her art than her daughter essentially. In Forever, she claims this is because her parents made her life miserable by never letting her do anything she wanted.
- I Am the Band: Cole St. Clair in relation to NARKOTICA. He's the one who jumps out on album covers, and he's most likely the one who leads his friends Jeremy and Victor into temptation.
- I Choose to Stay: At the end of Shiver, Olivia chooses to try and live with lycanthropy rather than gamble on an incredibly risky cure.
- I Just Want to Be Normal: Many of the werewolves feel this way.
- Important Haircut: Isabel gets one in Linger.
- Interspecies Romance: Sam and Grace.
- Karma Houdini: Shelby gets away alive despite trying to Murder the Hypotenuse in Shiver.
- She gets what she's got coming in Forever, though.
- Kill It with Fire: Technically speaking. The 'cure' for the wolves is to inject them with meningitis, which they describe as 'burning out the wolf inside'
- Last-Name Basis: Beck.
- Love At First Sight: Grace and Sam.
- Love Triangle: A small one with Grace/Sam/Shelby. Grace/Sam/Isabel and Cole/Isabel/Sam are both teased -- most overtly with an Indirect Kiss between Sam and Isabel at the beginning of Linger -- but neither goes anywhere.
- Mad Scientist: Cole in Forever, extending to making himself a guinea pig for his own experiments.
- Morality Pet: Inverted. In the first book, Isabel has a yappy little dog, appropriate to her Rich Bitch status. Shortly after Jack kills the dog, she does a Heel Face Turn for unrelated reasons.
- Naked First Impression: Isabel and Cole in Linger
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: At the end of Linger, it turns out lycanthropy is actually the body's (super)natural defense mechanism against a toxin- spread by the bites- that kills the victim slowly. "Curing" the shifts merely causes the toxin to kill the victim faster.
- Annoyingly, this plotline is then dropped in the third book, in favor of a Cliffhanger Copout: the meningitis cure from Shiver works, but simple heat stroke -- which suppossedly killed Grace's lycanthropy -- just leaves the body defenseless. Or something like that. Honestly, you get the feeling that Stiefvater's not too clear on how it all works, either.
- Our Werewolves Are Different: Very different indeed.
- Proud Warrior Race Guy: Shelby feels this way about being a wolf.
- Retool: Word of God says that the third book was finished, then completely rewritten from scratch because the author wasn't happy with it. Some problems resulted, possibly including the abovementioned Cliffhanger Copout.
- Rich Bitch: Isabel. Until she gets Character Development, anyway.
- Shadow Archetype: Cole to Sam, as The Lancer sub-type.
- Single-Target Sexuality: Sam and Grace only have eyes for eachother.
- Stalker with a Crush: Sam, even if he was a wolf at the time, and Shelby gets like this with Sam, too.
- Summon Bigger Fish: The theorized cure for lycanthropy? Bacterial meningitis. Results may vary.
- Technicolor Eyes: Sam's eyes are naturally yellow.
- Their First Time: Sam and Grace in Shiver
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Forever, chapter fifty-eight: Did Isabel ask Cole in?
- In Shiver, Three teenagers are infected with lycanthropy by Beck. One turns out to be Cole, the second his friend Victor, but the third never shows up again.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Isabel to Sam in Linger, for ignoring the fact that Grace is dying so as not to ruin their "Dream life."
- And again in Forever, for still not doing anything about it even after Grace turns wolf. Sam can be a real Emo Teen sometimes...
- Wrong Genre Savvy: Rachel displays this in Forever, refusing to come near Sam (who is a suspected murderer), and basically displaying more sense than any girl in a horror movie ever has...too bad she's in a teen romance book, and not the next Friday the 13th