The Raven Boys Review

The thing about Maggie Stiefvater is that her writing has a weird way of drawing you in and making you connect with events and characters you normally wouldn't. That was what happened to me with The Raven Boys, only it didn't draw me in quite enough to make me forget about it's problems.

Blue doesn't have an psychic abilities, which is weird because she comes from a long line of psychics. Still, she's definitely gotten used to dealing with the unusual. So has Gansey, but only because he's thrown himself into it for years to try and find Glendower, a dead Welsh king. In Virginia. He drags his friends, Adam, Ronan, and Noah, along with him to follow all kinds of clues that only lead to dead ends.

When their paths cross, they stop hitting dead ends and start getting answers. Answers they may not actually like. And as Blue gets closer to Adam, it gets harder to not kiss him, which is a problem, because all of her family have told her for years that the if she kisses her true love, he'll die.

As you can tell, there's a lot going on in The Raven Boys, and sometimes it got to be a little too much for me. The characters blended together and the plot seemed to be going nowhere. That's when I put it down to read a different book. When I came back to it, I found it to be a lot more enjoyable and a lot less confusing.

But plot-wise The Raven Boys still didn't do anything for me, even after I set it down. It seemed like very little actually happened and what did happen only somewhat mattered to the plot of the overall series, in my mind. It made this a very easy novel to set down, unfortunately.

And yet I connected with the characters in the end. I found Adam to be a wonderfully dreamy/angsty love interest. I found Gansey to be a fascinating and unique character. I found Blue to be a quirky and easy-to-relate-to protagonist.

In the end The Raven Boys was a mixed bag for me, and I'm not sure if I'll be reading the sequel or not.

Plot: Interesting but didn't really move.

Characters: I liked them.

Writing: Really good.

Ending: Meh.

Mature content: Maybe some swearing but I think that was about it.

Overall:

Somewhere in the middle.

I wasn't blown away by this book but it definitely wasn't the worst book I've ever read either.