Title: The Raven Boys
Author: Maggie Stiefvater
Publisher: Scholastic Press
Hardcover: 409 pages
My Rating: ♣ ♣ ♣ ♣ ♣ (4.8)
Recommended Season to Read: Fall/Winter
Every year, Blue Sargent stands next to her clairvoyant mother as the soon-to-be dead walk past. Blue never sees them–until this year, when a boy emerges from the dark and speaks to her.
His name is Gansey, a rich student at Aglionby, the local private school. Blue has a policy of staying away from Aglionby boys. Known as Raven Boys, they can only mean trouble.
But Blue is drawn to Gansey, in a way she can’t entirely explain. He is on a quest that has encompassed three other Raven Boys: Adam, the scholarship student who resents the privilege around him; Ronan, the fierce soul whose emotions range from anger to despair; and Noah, the taciturn watcher who notices many things but says very little.
For as long as she can remember, Blue has been warned that she will cause her true love to die. She doesn’t believe in true love, and never thought this would be a problem. But as her life becomes caught up in the strange and sinister world of the Raven Boys, she’s not so sure anymore.
I would be lying if I said I liked this book. Truth is, I actually devoured it. It was amazing. Probably one of the best books I’ve read in my life. Not my top favorite, but definitely very close. I just finished reading the series and they were oh-so good! The books are richly written with such a wide diversity in words that I was immediately engulfed by the book. I fell in love with the characters and writing this now still makes a bit sad to have finished the series so fast. I’m usually a slow reader, but these series went by so fast!
I have grown quite fond of this world of ley lines, magic, and dreams Stiefvater created. And the characters were so well written and developed that I immediately related to them (Can we all just take a moment and appreciate books like this one. They are simply happiness on paper.) They were so real that when reading the book, I truly felt like I was reading about real human beings. It was incredible. Blue is the main character, she is brave, loyal, funny, and overall fabulous (and sensible). Gansey is, well, the ideal human being: I don’t know how to describe him. Ronan, oh-ho Ronan, at first he may seem far away, cold and harsh, but once you really get to know him you realize he’s the kind of person who breaks really easily and loves his family. Adam. In the first couple books, Adam striked me as prideful and full of himself and I didn’t like him very much. But as the series rolled on, I started to appreciate him much more and look at him from a different angle, the better one. He is such an amazing character and you can really see how he changed and adapted throughout the story. Blue, Gansey, Adam and Ronan can all be considered as quite dynamic and round characters.
As you can see I did not give these series a 5. That is what I am going to talk about now. As much as I absolutely adore The Raven Cycle, I was a bit annoyed when Maggie Stiefvater chose to skip over some events she deemed not-relevant to the plot. I don’t want to go too much into the details or I might spoil it for some, but there would be this pretty interesting event coming it and she would completely skip over it and only tell us the outcome in the next book. Also, when reading the book, I found a few passages that seemed…off, like for example when Blue and Adam meet up for their “first date”. It was written weirdly and seemed pretty fake, but apart from this moment, I didn’t find any other shocking passages.
The Raven Cycle is an overall amazing series that I would definitely recommend to anybody older than twelve-ish and to someone who enjoys fantasy, adventure, romance, supernatural, or just an awesome book of fiction. It is so well written and planned out and has such round and complete characters that it’s hard to not fall in love with all of them.
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