A review by sweetjuicee_
The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater

adventurous dark hopeful mysterious reflective tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

TWs listed below


"You're Maura's daughter," Neeve said, and before Blue could answer, she added, "this is the year you'll fall in love."

I read this book because I remembered how much my friend liked it during COVID-19. I saw her reposting memes and fanart of the series, so when I saw it in my (not so local) bookstore, I bought it on a whim with two other books of a similar price and I can still feel that £30-ish hole in my bank account. This book was worth it, though, and I hope I can say the same for the other two.
~~~
The book follows Blue Sargent, the daughter of a psychic who lives with other psychics yet doesn't have any psychic abilities herself, becoming friends with 4 boys who go to the private school in her small town Aglionby. The school's mascot is a raven, so boys from this school gained the moniker 'The Raven Boys', and together they try and wake the ley lines to find the old Welsh King Glendower, who disappeared after the English took over Wales back in the 13th century.

I've read many romantasy books, and I'm glad this one sticks to its original plot. The chapters in this book help to either build character, advance the main plot or advance a character arc/subplot. Even the three or four chapters from the Latin teacher Whelk are useful
to show the type of person he is (a thief obsessed with getting his riches back, to the point where he'd kill his best friend, one of his students and a famous psychic just for a taste of the wealth he had before his father was arrested) and his relationship to the main 4 raven boys (with him being Noah's old friend and murderer)
. Other books I've read abandon their plot midway through for a romance that was obviously not going to last (*cough* The Cruel Prince *cough*) at the cost of removing the only interesting characteristic of the main character, but the plot was the main focus here and the short-lived romance was both longer lived than expected and happened with — not instead of — the plot.

However, the almost nauseating pacing and emotional changes were not fun. The true mystery where they try to wake the Ley Line and find Glendower doesn't start until roughly halfway through the book.
The chapters leading up to Blue meeting the boys, their card reading and Blue disobeying her mother and choosing to help them despite her warning were long and a little hard to read. There were about 8-12 chapters between Gansey's call and the reading. In the book, I believe it wasn't even up to a week, but not only was I antsy reading, making the chapters between feel longer, they were significantly longer chapters than the ones in the second half of the book.
Irregular chapter lengths are a huge pet peeve of mine. I don't want to read 20 pages of Blue's daily routine after Gansey's 3 pages of his fight scene. 

The same goes for the emotional changes.
Having a chapter on Blue putting together her school project right after Adam's dad abuses him, and right before Ronan steps in and fights Adam's dad as Adam tries to get up and reorient himself after he loses hearing in his left ear was a terrible idea. The chapters were emotionally draining, but that chapter gave me intense emotional whiplash. It should've been before those two.

Finally, I spoiled myself after trying to look for fanart to understand what the characters looked like, but even before I did that, it was so obvious that something was wrong with Noah. What do you mean none of them could tell that something was wrong with Noah, let alone that he was a ghost? He never eats, he never drinks, he wears the uniform all the time but neither Ronan, Gansey nor Adam share any lessons with him, his bedroom looks untouched, only you, Blue and a select few people can see him and he appears and disappears multiple times a day? Did they just think he was a little quirky like that? If the only signs were the lack of eating and drinking, then sure, but they saw them all and chose to ignore it. When they confront Noah, he says he tried to tell them he was a ghost. This scene just made me question their relationships with each other. If they couldn't figure out that their ghost friend who never tried to hide that he was a ghost was, in fact, a ghost, do Ronan, Gansey and Adam even know each other?

~~~
I like Adam and Blue together. They're cute. They suit each other. They make a good "this is our first relationship" couple. I can't figure out much to say about them, other than that. I enjoyed their relationship,
and though they break up in the next book, I'm glad Adam doesn't go through a common, yet infuriating character assassination. Blue and Gansey won't feel like it's come out of nowhere, thanks to Stiefvater's successful foreshadowing, and Adam and Ronan was the only predictable choice
.
~~~
This review is far too long, so I'll keep this short.
  1. Blue: For some reason, I thought her name was Lily while trying to write this. Either way, she suffers from something I've recently called Tumblr Syndrome. Plain enough that she can be a self-insert, and "so different" from others, so "not like other girls". Lucy Carlyle from my favourite book series also suffers from this, less from the characterisation, but she explicitly states that she has no female friends in book 2. I like Blue. She lives a relatively boring life despite her psychic family and truly plays a vital role in the story. One thing I found weird was how she hated the Raven Boys
    but had no qualms about helping them with their search for Glendower
    , but she's a good character, even with slight Tumblr Syndrome.
  2. Gansey: Not a fan. He's not a bad character or even a bad person, but he's definitely not as interesting as I thought he would be
    , even though the only reason why he's alive is because of Noah's death
    . Money's been in his family for so long that he didn't realise how out of touch he is with Adam and Blue, and I hated when he said "I'm sorry your father never taught you the word repugnant. He was too busy smashing your head against the wall of your trailer while you apologise for being alive", it's insane how he thought this was appropriate to say to anyone, let alone Adam. He's old enough to know that words can be just as painful as a punch.
  3. Ronan: Another sufferer of Tumblr Syndrome: edgy bad boy with some sort of parental (father) issues who takes it out on those closest to him (his brothers, Adam and Gansey) and has some sort of unhealthy coping mechanism (alcoholism) which makes his grades suffer in all but one subject (latin, for some reason), aka one of my least favourite characterisations, as a child of Episode. He's better than the rest of the men of these tropes since he does genuinely start changing his attitude and studies.
  4. Adam: I have a soft spot for characters like Adam. Maybe it's from consuming too much media that suffers from Second Lead Syndrome and mid-story-but-end-of-book-one character assassinations (*cough* War Hour *cough*), but I always looked forward to his chapters and enjoyed reading his thought process much more than the others. He's sweet and thankfully not creepy.
  5. Noah: Another character I have a soft spot for. Even though his friends are either dumber than they think or incredibly self-absorbed (both seems more likely), his strangeness was obvious from the start.
The rest I'll omit. This is too long.
~~~
I left this review for too long, so now I've forgotten a good amount of things I probably could've written if I didn't start this review 1 month or 3 library books after finishing this. Even though this review seems like it's mainly huge complaints, this was a great read and I'm very excited to start book 2.
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