Title: The Raven BoysSeries: The Raven Cycle #1
Author: Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Fantasy/Realistic Fiction/Paranormal
Age Group: (Young Adult)
Age Group: (Young Adult)
Pages: 416 (Hardcover)
Publisher: Scholastic Press
Publication date: September 18th, 2012
Synopsis from The Raven Boys' Goodreads page
I first read this book back in 2013, and I remembered almost the entire story, but it needed a re-read so that I could get to The Raven King (which I am SO excited for!!).
Firstly, the cover. I mean, it's gorgeous. It's definitely one of my favourite covers ever. EVER. I also rarely buy full price hardcovers, and I have the entire quartet in hardcover. So you know it's beautiful.
I remember going into this book with so much enthusiasm and so much energy. It was the newest Maggie Stiefvater book that had just came out, and I was so insanely excited for it. Even though it has been three years since then, and I have already read it and experienced it for the first time, I still remember how excited I was and I still had the same level of energy I did the first time I went into it.
Maggie Stiefvater is a wizard with words (a witch? a wizard? king? She can be whatever she wants as long as she keeps writing more!). Her stories are so beautiful to read, and her writing flows so smoothly and beautifully that it's just...I can't even describe it.
Her characters as well as always so unique and so wonderfully described that it feels like they're right there in the room, that you know them and have known them your whole life. Her characters are different, I mean Blue Sargent, Richard Gansey III, the names are so unexpected, but they're so fitting. The names are the characters' identities, they are those names, they are the embodiment of them. Her characters are so humorous as well, with them poking fun at each other and at other people in the story. They get angry and they love each other, they fight but they get through it. They feel like real people, and they always have to me, no matter how many times I read the story. They just become more real each and every time.
The setting as well is different, taking place in Henrietta. Who else has read a book that takes place in Henrietta? I haven't. I haven't even heard of another book that takes place there. But it seems fitting, in its own way. Maggie Stiefvater's writing makes it feel like it just couldn't take place anywhere else in the world. Henrietta is the place that it has to take place.
The story is one of the most amazing stories to me not only because of the author, the characters, the writing and the setting, but because of the plot. I'm from a Welsh family, but I live in Canada. This story is about Gansey trying to find Glendower, who is a Welsh king that he believes was buried along a ley line, and he believes that if he can find him and wake him (because he's not dead, he's just been sleeping for six hundred years) he will be granted a favour. When I found out that it was going to be a book that takes place in America and it had Welsh kings and history and magic in it...how could anyone possibly say no to that??
Overall - ★★★★★
Synopsis from The Raven Boys' Goodreads page
Every year, Blue Sargent stands next to her clairvoyant mother as the soon-to-be dead walk past. Blue never sees them--until this year, when a boy emerges from the dark and speaks to her.
His name is Gansey, 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 is on a quest that has encompassed three other Raven Boys: Adam, the scholarship student who resents the privilege around him; Ronan, the fierce soul whose emotions range from anger to despair; and Noah, the taciturn watcher 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 doesn't believe in true love, and never thought this would be a problem. But as her life becomes caught up in the strange and sinister world of the Raven Boys, she's not so sure anymore.
His name is Gansey, 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 is on a quest that has encompassed three other Raven Boys: Adam, the scholarship student who resents the privilege around him; Ronan, the fierce soul whose emotions range from anger to despair; and Noah, the taciturn watcher 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 doesn't believe in true love, and never thought this would be a problem. But as her life becomes caught up in the strange and sinister world of the Raven Boys, she's not so sure anymore.
I first read this book back in 2013, and I remembered almost the entire story, but it needed a re-read so that I could get to The Raven King (which I am SO excited for!!).
Firstly, the cover. I mean, it's gorgeous. It's definitely one of my favourite covers ever. EVER. I also rarely buy full price hardcovers, and I have the entire quartet in hardcover. So you know it's beautiful.
I remember going into this book with so much enthusiasm and so much energy. It was the newest Maggie Stiefvater book that had just came out, and I was so insanely excited for it. Even though it has been three years since then, and I have already read it and experienced it for the first time, I still remember how excited I was and I still had the same level of energy I did the first time I went into it.
Maggie Stiefvater is a wizard with words (a witch? a wizard? king? She can be whatever she wants as long as she keeps writing more!). Her stories are so beautiful to read, and her writing flows so smoothly and beautifully that it's just...I can't even describe it.
Her characters as well as always so unique and so wonderfully described that it feels like they're right there in the room, that you know them and have known them your whole life. Her characters are different, I mean Blue Sargent, Richard Gansey III, the names are so unexpected, but they're so fitting. The names are the characters' identities, they are those names, they are the embodiment of them. Her characters are so humorous as well, with them poking fun at each other and at other people in the story. They get angry and they love each other, they fight but they get through it. They feel like real people, and they always have to me, no matter how many times I read the story. They just become more real each and every time.
The setting as well is different, taking place in Henrietta. Who else has read a book that takes place in Henrietta? I haven't. I haven't even heard of another book that takes place there. But it seems fitting, in its own way. Maggie Stiefvater's writing makes it feel like it just couldn't take place anywhere else in the world. Henrietta is the place that it has to take place.
The story is one of the most amazing stories to me not only because of the author, the characters, the writing and the setting, but because of the plot. I'm from a Welsh family, but I live in Canada. This story is about Gansey trying to find Glendower, who is a Welsh king that he believes was buried along a ley line, and he believes that if he can find him and wake him (because he's not dead, he's just been sleeping for six hundred years) he will be granted a favour. When I found out that it was going to be a book that takes place in America and it had Welsh kings and history and magic in it...how could anyone possibly say no to that??
Overall - ★★★★★
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