Title: The Raven Boys
Author: Maggie Stiefvater
Blurb:
"There are only two reasons a non-seer would see a spirit on St. Mark’s Eve,” Neeve said. “Either you’re his true love . . . or you killed him.”
It is freezing in the churchyard, even before the dead arrive.
Every year, Blue Sargent stands next to her clairvoyant mother as the soon-to-be dead walk past. Blue herself never sees them—not until this year, when a boy emerges from the dark and speaks directly to her.
His name is Gansey, and Blue soon discovers that he is 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 has it all—family money, good looks, devoted friends—but he’s looking for much more than that. He is on a quest that has encompassed three other Raven Boys: Adam, the scholarship student who resents all the privilege around him; Ronan, the fierce soul who ranges from anger to despair; and Noah, the taciturn watcher of the four, 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 never thought this would be a problem. But now, as her life becomes caught up in the strange and sinister world of the Raven Boys, she’s not so sure anymore.
From Maggie Stiefvater, the bestselling and acclaimed author of the Shiver trilogy and The Scorpio Races, comes a spellbinding new series where the inevitability of death and the nature of love lead us to a place we’ve never been before.
Links:
The Raven Boys on Goodreads
The Raven Boys on Amazon
Maggie Stiefvater's Website
Kala's Review:
Thank you to Scholastic for providing me a copy of this book via netgalley.com. :)
The very beginning of this book and the very end of this book are phenominal. Unfortunately, the middle is dreadfully boring and confusing to the point where I seriously struggled to get through nearly 200 pages of this novel.
I loved Scorpio Races and thought Shiver was okay. The blurb of this book excited me as well, and I couldn't wait to read another Stiefvater book. Then I opened it up and got even more excited. Blue and Gansey were both fascinating and I couldn't wait to see how they end up meeting up, and what happens from there...
But after that meetup, the story just collapsed for me. I found Adam kind of boring and I don't see someone as eccentric as Blue falling for someone that boring. He is sweet and nice, but I felt myself skimming the pages where he and Blue were interacting because it was all so boring. I also thought Adam was kind of a jerk to Gansey, considering Gansey seemed to want nothing more than to help him. I get that he was prideful, but Gansey obviously had good intentions and Adam treated him pretty badly (especially towards the end after the big confrontation).
Gansey was far more interesting at the start, but he even fell a little flat for me in the middle. He was so focused on the quest, and I was hoping to see more interaction between him and Blue. We get this amazing setup in the first few chapters, with Blue seeing his dead spirit on St. Mark's Eve, and the prediction of Blue kissing her true love and killing him... then he and Blue barely interact. The only time I saw any chemistry between them were the "visions" that Blue had a few times of them. Their actual interactions were boring.
The last couple of chapters picked up again, but at the end I was left feeling somewhat cheated. I can't say there was no plot, because a lot of things happened, but they weren't what I was expecting and they definitely weren't better than I was expecting. I wasn't emotionally attached to Noah, or Barrington, or Neeve, or any of the characters who played such a huge role at the end of this book.
That said, this book wasn't awful. I just didn't love it. I will probably continue the series, as I'm interested to see how things work out for Blue and Gansey.
3 out of 5 stars.
Link to Kala's review on Goodreads:
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/419788782
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