Book Review: The Raven Boys

I love Blue and Gansey! I can’t begin to tell you how impressed I was with this story. Maggie Stiefvater just soared to my top 5 YA authors, along with Holly Black and Libba Bray.



She doesn’t know it, but I’ve been stalking her online the last few weeks, ever since I finished reading Raven Boys. Let’s just say, her blog is a whole lot of fun! I was hoping I could find a way to get her for an interview, but it doesn’t look like it’s very easy to get time with her.



Anyway, I love Blue. She’s so down to earth and pragmatic. She’s the only teenage girl in a house full of women: her mom, her mom’s two best friends, her two aunts, and her mom’s half sister. And everybody in this house is a psychic except her.



Her mom is so laid back, treating Blue more like a mini adult than a teenager, which is why I think Blue is so mature. Until Blue meets Gansey, Blue’s mom has never given Blue a direct order or a restriction before, but after, Blue is banned from ever seeing him again.



I love this dialogue between Blue and her mom:

[Mom:] “Way back before you were born, Calla and Persephone and I were messing around with things we probably shouldn’t have been messing around with ——”

[Blue:] “Drugs?”

[Mom:] “Rituals. Are you messing around with drugs?”

[Blue:] “No. But maybe rituals.”

[Mom:] “Drugs may be better.”

[Blue:] “I’m not interested in them. Their effects are proven –— where’s the fun in that? Tell me more.”

And Gansey. He’s just so complex. One moment, he seems like a haughty rich playboy, and the next he’s just an insane scholar searching for his one, all-consuming passion. This description of his apartment (a refurbished, abandoned old factory) also depicts Gansey’s personality pretty well:

The high ceiling soared above them, exposed iron beams holding up the roof. Gansey’s invented apartment was a dreamer’s laboratory. The entire second floor, thousands of square feet, spread out before them. Two of the walls were made up of old windows —– dozens of tiny warped panes, except for a few clear ones Gansey had replaced –— and the other two walls were covered with maps: the mountains of Virginia, of Wales, of Europe. Marker lines arced across each of them. Across the floor, a telescope peered at the western sky; at its feet lay piles of arcane electronics meant to measure magnetic activity.

And everywhere, everywhere, there were books. Not the tidy stacks of an intellectual attempting to impress, but the slumping piles of a scholar obsessed. Some of the books weren’t in English. Some of the books were dictionaries for the languages that some of the other books were in. Some of the books were actually Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Editions.

And the story! So well played. Just enough information given to keep us asking questions, and the more I learned as the mystery / adventure unfolded, the more addicted I was to Gansey’s search for the missing King.

Have you read this one yet? I'd love to hear your thoughts!