Also, I haven't read the Mercy Falls books in years, so this was a bit of an adventure. I nearly Wikipedia'ed summaries of them so I could be like "Oh, right, that happened," but I managed to do alright for myself. At least I remembered they're about werewolves, right?
So, in typical Stiefvater fashion, this novel is jointly narrated by Cole St. Clair and Isabel Culpeper, switching off every one or two chapters for a nice, comprehensive look at the story. Cole has just returned to LA, in part because of a webseries deal he landed, but also because that's where Isabel is, and he wants to be near her.
Isabel's wary, though - her family life has never been super warm and comforting, and she's learned that it's easier to develop a thick, impenetrable skin than let someone get too close. She's still relatively happy to see Cole, but she's not going to let herself fall in love with him, especially if he starts using or shifting again.
Cole's on the straight and narrow, much as it infuriates his new boss, Baby North (a name that can only remind me of the Kimye kid regardless of how much we learn about her character). She's known for finding struggling stars that want to revamp their careers and broadcasting vlogs about them on her website, sharpt33th.com, and the ratings always go up when the starts relapse into their old habits. She sets up plenty of opportunities for Cole to fail - junkie new bandmates, naked girls, mishaps in the recording studio - but Cole refuses to take the bait, creating his own TV-worthy situations instead. The stress of LA life does get to him, though, and he copes by forcing the change, though he knows making a controlled shift will only make him more likely to have an uncontrolled shift later on.
He also manages to get close with Isabel again, finding ways to talk to her without being recorded by the billions of cameras Baby North has planted in his apartment and even putting her in charge of "Virtual Cole," the phone with all of his social media apps on it - a move that forces her to talk to him more in order for her updates to sound realistic and reflect what he's actually doing. Everything's going smoothly, at least until it's not.
When Isabel catches Cole in some compromising situations, will she ever believe that he's telling the truth again? And when Cole realizes that maybe returning to his old haunts is just holding him back, will he find a way to make music without destroying his personal life? I'm not gonna spoil those answers for you.
Even though I haven't read the Mercy Falls books in ages, I still felt comfortable reading this novel. Sam and Grace, the protagonists from that series, don't really make an appearance in Sinner, so I didn't have to worry about remembering their arc too well, and it's pretty easy to pick up on Cole and Isabel's issues without needing a complete reread of the trilogy. Just remember that the shift is temperature-controlled and how Isabel's brother died, and you'll be good to go.
I love that this book was done with two narrators, too. It definitely would have been harder to understand Cole and Isabel's motivations with only one of them "speaking" for the whole story, and I probably would have found the one who wasn't narrating insufferable if I couldn't see into their head. It also allows the two growth arcs - because both Cole and Isabel need to change to make their love work - to develop properly and become really full-bodied.
I think my only critique of this book is that I would have liked to see Isabel learn to open up to other people a little bit sooner. Not at like the beginning of the novel or anything like that, but she doesn't really have her "aha" moment until the last few pages, and when I first read it, I felt pretty underwhelmed. I might have just been in a novel-finishing haze, though, because when I looked at it for a second time, I understood a little better how it fit into the broader scheme of the novel. I suppose what I really want is more of a resolution with Sofia, her cousin, a side character who got a lot of face time but never a lot of development. Isabel treats her like crap for a lot of the book without really understanding why, which I would kind of like to know.
Overall, Sinner was a good, engrossing read. The characters felt lifelike, the songs were tunes I'd like to actually have recorded, and I could believe and understand the struggles Cole and Isabel had, even if I couldn't directly relate. Four and a half stars.
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