Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Book Review: Shifting by Bethany Wiggins (Whitney Finalist)

Title: Shifting
Author: Bethany Wiggins
Enjoyment Rating: 7/10
Referral: Whitney Finalist
Source: Kindle for iPad
Books I've read this year: 54

It's been a while since I finished reading Shifting, so it might be hard to give a great review of it. Maggie Mae is seventeen, and has been in about that many foster homes during her childhood. She has the unfortunate habit of being picked up by the police for indecent exposure. So Maggie's social worker deposits her in a town in Southern New Mexico with his mother, who promises to get Maggie out of high school and past her eighteenth birthday without mishap. However, this proves to be more difficult than either of them anticipated. People follow her. The kids at school seem to hate her. And then there's Bridger, the impossibly gorgeous guy who seems totally interested in her. Maggie isn't sure how much she can trust him or tell him about herself.

Shifting is well-written and engrossing. I definitely found myself captured by the story, and was even more impressed when I read that the paranormal stuff in the story, the Skinwalkers, come directly from Navajo legend. Wiggins does a great job setting the story against a backdrop that's rich in Navajo history. My main quibble with the story, and it's a small one, I think, is that Maggie waits so long to let readers know what exactly is going on with her. I can understand why she would want to keep the secret from her foster families and people at school, but it made me distrust her a little bit as a narrator when she didn't come right out and tell us why she was always naked in public until we saw it happen for the first time. 

1 comment:

Katie said...

I am so amazed at your commitment to reading. With a new baby and finishing your thesis, you still have 54 books read so far this year.