Raven Boys review

Goodreads: “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.
  
My thoughts: The kind of authors I enjoy are ones that either stick to similar themes but have a creative way of telling them or have drastically different stories with some familiar thread running through them. Maggie represents the latter, and after reading and loving Scorpio Races, I couldn’t wait to see what new adventure she would design. And this one a very different, filled with lay lines, sacrifices, and nature settings that have a fondness for Latin.

            Raven Boys almost seems to start with an ending (a good way to start if you do it right, according to my cinema teacher). Blue knows that if she kisses her true love, that person will die. But she and we don’t know who and when. And you think it will go one way as characters are introduced (mainly Gansey), but it doesn’t. As things continue to be revealed, there are some secrets that have been "hidden," out in the open the whole time.  And there are some things that you wouldn’t expect until it actually happens.

       Raven Boys initially seems like a romance. But once you get to know all the characters and see the complexity of their fate, it is shown that there is more to this story. Not just with Blue and “the boys,” but also with her mother and her psychic friends.

     The one thing I didn’ t like was how things got wrapped up. I know this book has to help setup the series, but after building and developing the story, it seemed to end too soon.  Not in the sense that I needed more pages, just that something seemed missing. Other than that, it was a good story that has set me on my own quest to learn more about a certain welsh king. At least until the next book comes out.