March Madness: Round One, Match Five

Today's paranormal feature is werewolves. There are lots of fantastic werewolf books out there so narrowing it down to two was fairly difficult. So we have...

 vs. 

Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater is a love story between Grace, human, and Sam who, as a werewolf, lives in the woods behind her house. She's always been drawn to the wolves without knowing why. In the summer, Sam is able to be human but in the cold Sam turns into a wolf. As he grows older, his time as a human grows shorter and shorter. Sam has to fight to stay human or risk losing himself, and Grace, forever. 

Nightshade by Andrea Cremer is another werewolf romance. Calla and Ren have been raised knowing it is their destiny to mate with one another and rule over their shape-shifting wolf pack, but when a human boy arrives and vies for Calla's heart, she is faced with a decision that could change her whole world.




In the dystopia corner we have two gritty dystopian novels (are there any other kinds?)

 vs. 

The House of Scorpion by Nancy Farmer takes place in the devastatingly bleak futuristic world of Opium where, for generations, El Patron has ruled a drug empire with an iron fist. El Patron has survived by having clones made from a supply of frozen DNA, clones who can provide body parts and, ultimately, new life and clones who aren't even considered human in this society. Matt is the latest in the line of the clones who have been harvested for El Patron and El Patron has decided that he's going to give Matt a chance to have the best of everything before using the boy's heart. But things are about to fall apart in the perfectly dreadful world that El Patron has created and Matt holds the key to a brighter future if he can survive. (description from Amazon.ca)

Incarceron by Catherine Fisher is soon going to be a film with Taylor Lautner. Just saying. Interestingly, Amazon calls Incarceron, "A thrilling, high-concept fantasy for fans of Garth Nix and Nancy Farmer" so if you liked House of Scorpion, you might like this and vice versa.
Here's the description from the catalog: To free herself from an upcoming arranged marriage, Claudia, the daughter of the Warden of Incarceron, a futuristic prison with a mind of its own, decides to help a young prisoner escape.