Earlier this year, Maggie Stiefvater revealed that she will be releasing Sinner - a companion novel to her much loved Shiver series. Sinner will follow Shiver’s loveable bad-boy, Cole St. Clair, and the sassy, blunt and Cole’s much needed reality check, Isabel. Since Maggie suprised her fans with this news, there has been lots of debate about what the cover for Cole’s story will look like, and today, the cover was revealed via Entertainment Weekly (original post can be found here)! Behold, the cover for SINNER!

Synopsis: A standalone companion book to the internationally bestselling Shiver Trilogy.

Sinner follows Cole St. Clair, a pivotal character from the #1 New York Times bestselling Shiver Trilogy. Everybody thinks they know Cole’s story. Stardom. Addiction. Downfall. Disappearance. But only a few people know Cole’s darkest secret — his ability to shift into a wolf. One of these people is Isabel. At one point, they may have even loved each other. But that feels like a lifetime ago. Now Cole is back. Back in the spotlight. Back in the danger zone. Back in Isabel’s life. Can this sinner be saved?

“Legions of fans — myself included — have wanted Maggie to return to the world of Shiver, and now she’s found an ingenious, sexy, utterly compelling way to do it,” says David Levithan, VP/Publisher and Editorial Director, Scholastic Press. “This isn’t so much a re-visitation as it is a reinvention, with Maggie taking readers to many places they’ve never been with her before. There is nothing quite so amazing as Maggie Stiefvater at the top of her game.”

Author Maggie Stiefvater says, “For me, finishing the Shiver trilogy was a bittersweet moment — I knew that I wouldn’t be returning to Mercy Falls once Sam and Grace’s story was over. But Cole and Isabel still lurked in the back of my mind. Both of them were only half-fixed at the end of the trilogy, and I wanted to know if they could be fixed the rest of the way.”

Release Date: July 1st 2014
Published By: Scholastic
Goodreads: Add it to your reading list

Thoughts: As a cover in general, I certainly don’t have an issues with the cover of Sinner. I love the fact that you see Cole and wolf (who could this be?) and the background with LA is very nice. In a colouring sense, I was hoping for a yellow/orange cover for Sinner, so the colouring didn’t disappoint me. However, my very first thought of seeing this cover was “Nooooo… it doesn’t match the Shiver series!”. As you may know, I need my books to match. I need the covers to be the same style, and the books to be the same size. When books don’t match, I have a mini-meltdown - I just can’t handle it. Although some would say this doesn’t need to match as it is technically not a part of the Shiver series - it is a companion novel (it can be read as a standalone), andnd while I understand what they are saying, I’m sorry, I just don’t accept this excuse when it comes to matching covers for a series and companion novels, novellas or anthologies. Basically for me, a companion novel is a part of a series. (And if I ever need supporting evidence, I always refer back to Goodreads - if it has the original series title after the books title, then it is a part of the series). So, after my initial disappointment, I continued to read the original post, and found that the whole Shiver series is being re-jacketed. And here are the new Shiver, Linger and Forever covers:

I think these are very pretty, and they certainly match Sinner! My only issue is, I don’t have these covers, I have the original ones (2 sets actually - 1 signed set, 1 “reading” set) and I really don’t need to buy another set. But, at the end of the day, my options are to buy another set, or to be a big girl and get over it… and I don’t know which one it will be yet.

So, yes, I do like the cover, but I am disappointed that there has been a cover change for this series. I love the original covers, I felt the ever-so-pretty outside were just as much of the series as the story inside.

What do you think of the cover of Sinner? What do you think of the new covers for Shiver, Linger and Forever? Will you be re-buying the set to have these pretty covers? Let us know in the comments below!