Review: The Raven Boys

The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater
Series: The Raven Cycle (#1)
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ 

“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.

This book is why I give authors second, third, and sometimes even fourth chances (*cough* Colleen Hoover *cough*). Because while I might not enjoy one book they wrote, I like to think that doesn’t mean I’ll hate everything they publish.

Take Stiefvater. I tried to read Shiver a while back, and my review for it is literally just this gif:

This book is also why I believe in mood reading. I picked it up a while ago and got about 50 pages in before setting it aside. The opening is…not strong. I mean, come on, hints of a love triangle, all that bullshit about fate (which, sorry, not sorry, I don’t believe in), and a bunch of spoiled, mysterious rich boys (hmmm…where have I seen that theme a million times before? Oh, right! Every cliched YA book I’ve ever hated!).

Totally not my scene.

But so many of my friends rave over this series that I just had to give it a second chance. And boy, am I happy that I did. Because aside from the #richpeopleproblems this plot is pretty fucking original. Slumbering mythical heroes, living dead kids, a wood in which time is merely an illusion, and a female lead who, while slightly manic-pixie-dreamgirl-ish, has been raised to be her own person by a house full of eccentric women?

Yeah, sign me up for that shit. All day long.

One last gripe, since this is something that needs to be addressed in pretty much every book set in modern times: there is little to no representation of diversity or the lgbt+ community in here. I live near where this book is supposed to take place, so the lack of any people of color or lgbt+ characters really jumped out at me.