Shiver - first post

I'm reading a book named Shiver by the American writer Maggie Stiefvater. The book is about a seventeen year old girl named Grace and her fascination for the wolves who lives in the forest just outside her house. Especially one of them has caught her attention, a wolf with unique yellow eyes that's often standing at the edge of the woods and her backyard, watching her.
But what Grace doesn't know is that the yellow eyed wolf actually is a werewolf. In the summers when it gets warmer he turns into a human, with the same special yellow eyes. His name is Sam.

The book is written in two different angels, Grace's and Sam's, and Sam's angel sometimes is from a human's perspective and sometimes from a wolf's. He also feels drawn to Grace, and the special connection between them seems to have been formed a cold winter many years ago. Then Sam's pack attacked Grace and dragged her into the woods. But despite the horrible hunger, Sam stopped the other wolves from killing her.

Grace doesn't remember how she survived, but she remembers Sam's special, yellow eyes. And since that day she spends a lot of time watching the pack and Sam, or as she likes to think, her wolf. Grace often tries to make contact with him, but it seems to me that Sam
is a bit afraid of a closer contact. As a human he has the chance to contact her, one time Grace even shows up in the same bookstore as he works. But instead of do something he just wishes that Grace will look into his yellow eyes and understand who he is. But she never notices
him as a human.

But one day in September, something unexpected happens. A boy in Grace's school, Jack Culpeper, suddenly gets killed. Everybody thinks that the wolves in the forest killed him, and now they are terrified of them. Everybody except Grace.

Ever since she started watching the wolves from her garden she has memorized all of the pack-members faces and personalities. Only two of them, the sick wolf and the white she-wolf, Grace could imagine attack a human. But the rest of them she doesn't fear at all. And she doesn't think any of them would attack someone without any reason.

One day Grace walks to the edge between her backyard and forest to meet her wolf. He's standing there as always, watching and waiting, and they face each other, closer than they never been before. Then she sees a little blood on his nose. Grace talks to him, and asks him if he killed Jack Culpeper. And then, for the first time since they met, Sam closes his yellow eyes.
Slowly Grace goes closer and eventually she thatches the wolf for the first time since they met. And he doesn?t move until the white she-wolf suddenly appears in the woods, just starring at them. Then Sam leaves Grace and follows the white wolf back into the woods.

This is as far as I've read in Shiver, and this last part made me wonder a lot of things. First of all, it seems like the rest of the pack has influence on Sam. They seem to stop him from take as much contact with Grace as he actually wants. I can really feel their desire to be close each other, but different things always seem to stop them.

I also wander if the wolves killed Jack or not. At first I think they didn't, but the fact that Jack was dragged into the woods, the blood on Sam's nose and his closed eyes when Grace asked about it, it all sounds so suspicious. But maybe, that's just what the writer wants us to believe, when there is actually a completely different explanation for Jack's death. So I really understand Grace when the circumstances around Jack's death make her a bit confused.

When I continue reading the book I think that Jack's death will have a big meaning in the future. The fact that almost everybody think that the wolves is responsible will get consequences.

And to get the answers to my questions and speculations, I just have to continue reading, and that's exactly what I'm going to do!
//Gertrud