“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 theShiver 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.
I’ve read my share of reviews for The Raven Boys, and I just, I don’t know. I don’t understand. I’m not saying that everyone is not entitled to their own opinion or disputing the fact, I just don’t understand. I don’t understand how this book, how any of the books I’ve read by Maggie Stiefvater – Shiver, The Scorpio Races – could be rated as mediocre or merely okay.
The Raven Boys is that book you don’t want to put down. You can’t. The book you don’t want to finish, partly because you have no idea when the next book of the series is scheduled to release, but mostly because you’re afraid that you won’t find a book just as good. I literally have no idea what to read next.
Maggie Stiefvater can write a novel. That’s what it boils down to. A novel that you can’t imagine that someone just simply sat down to write. It has to be real. Blue, Gansey, Adam – they must be real people, living real lives, because their story is just too vivid and wonderful and heartbreaking and real… to be made up. These people are developed so well, they must be real, hiding somewhere in the trees of Virginia. I think this is what Maggie Stiefvater prides herself on: her characters. And she should be proud. Proud of this novel, this series, this world, because we, her readers, want nothing more than a really good book to fall head first into. It’s been so long since I read a YA novel like this, one that, frankly, doesn’t annoy me but makes me wish there were more novels like this one. Magical and beautiful and intriguing and not suspenseful because the author leaves you hanging but suspenseful because it just is. It’s natural. The entire thing is just very natural and please, Maggie, don’t make us wait too long for book two.
Mark Brassington 