"And here was what I was most afraid of: that Cole St. Clair would fall in love me with me, and I'd fall in love with him, both of us human weapons, and we'd both end up with broken hearts."
Isabel Culpeper in Sinner
A companion novel to Maggie Stiefvater's Wolves of Mercy Falls series, Sinner follows characters Cole St. Clair and Isabel Culpeper as they navigate Los Angeles and their tumultuous romance two years after the events of the previous novels. Cole is a former rock-star working on his first solo album with a reality show monitoring his every move and it's producer aiming to tear him down. Isabel is struggling to maintain her perfect Californian reality with Cole in it. They must decide if they are better off without each other and decide if they had ever really found love in the first place. Sinner resolves the tension between two characters that may be better off without each other through their post-adolescence and leads to an epic love story anyway.
Sinner is not a novel that could have stood alone. It isn't great for its plot and it's not strong enough to kick off a new series, but in terms of wrapping up Cole and Isabel's romance, Sinner was an absolute necessity. I first fell in love with the two cynical characters in Stiefvater's Linger and Forever, and was thrilled to hear that the author planned to focus on them in a separate novel. Because it is a beautifully crafted emotional work about characters I already loved, Sinner is nothing short of a masterpiece.
As I read, I found that I really didn't care that there were few climactic events occurring. That had never been important to the Cole/Isabel story in the Wolves of Mercy Falls series. I found myself forgiving the author for leaving so many holes in the fate of her characters at the end of Forever. And, by the end, I found myself able to part ways with two characters that I love and feel peaceful because they had been given their shot to create the emotional epilogue I had so craved.
I think that the most important thing to understand about this story is that it isn't there to entertain, but instead to force you to see that characters can be just as complex as real-life personalities. The reader must see that Cole and Isabel are not there to provide a love story, but a narrative about love and life and growing up.
Isabel Culpeper in Sinner
A companion novel to Maggie Stiefvater's Wolves of Mercy Falls series, Sinner follows characters Cole St. Clair and Isabel Culpeper as they navigate Los Angeles and their tumultuous romance two years after the events of the previous novels. Cole is a former rock-star working on his first solo album with a reality show monitoring his every move and it's producer aiming to tear him down. Isabel is struggling to maintain her perfect Californian reality with Cole in it. They must decide if they are better off without each other and decide if they had ever really found love in the first place. Sinner resolves the tension between two characters that may be better off without each other through their post-adolescence and leads to an epic love story anyway.
Sinner is not a novel that could have stood alone. It isn't great for its plot and it's not strong enough to kick off a new series, but in terms of wrapping up Cole and Isabel's romance, Sinner was an absolute necessity. I first fell in love with the two cynical characters in Stiefvater's Linger and Forever, and was thrilled to hear that the author planned to focus on them in a separate novel. Because it is a beautifully crafted emotional work about characters I already loved, Sinner is nothing short of a masterpiece.
As I read, I found that I really didn't care that there were few climactic events occurring. That had never been important to the Cole/Isabel story in the Wolves of Mercy Falls series. I found myself forgiving the author for leaving so many holes in the fate of her characters at the end of Forever. And, by the end, I found myself able to part ways with two characters that I love and feel peaceful because they had been given their shot to create the emotional epilogue I had so craved.
I think that the most important thing to understand about this story is that it isn't there to entertain, but instead to force you to see that characters can be just as complex as real-life personalities. The reader must see that Cole and Isabel are not there to provide a love story, but a narrative about love and life and growing up.