The Raven Boys is the first book in Maggie Stiefvater’s award-winning paranormal fantasy series, the Raven Cycle. It has alternating point of views including that of Gansey, a privileged private school boy, Blue, the daughter of a legitimate psychic, Adam, a not-as-privileged private school boy who doesn’t fit in, and Ronan, the troublemaker whose late father was a man of mystery. Blue visits a churchyard on St. Mark’s Eve to take down the names of the people who will die in the coming year. As a non-seer, she shouldn’t be able to sense any of the spirits, but she is able to see Gansey, which means she is either his true love or his killer. Plot twist- Blue has always been told by multiple psychics that she is destined to kill her true love with a kiss.
This is only a small portion of the plot. It definitely seems stereotypical, but it is NOT. Throw any expectations out the window before reading this. When I first read the description, I thought this would be some sort of book about some rich kids in New York and definitely not worth my time. I could not have been more wrong. the characters have amazing levels of depth and so much foreshadowing that you wonder how the hell you didn’t see what was right in front of you. Aside from this, these books are hilarious and the author is also hilarious in real life. Some say the character archetypes are overused and that the story itself is too stereotypical. This is not the case at all. Even if the concept of the first book in the series was like this, the rest of the series improves as it goes along and the plot gets even more complex.
Overall I absolutely love these books if that wasn’t already evident. Maggie Stiefvater is an amazing YA author and this is definitely her best work.
Overall, I would give this book…
⭐⭐⭐⭐️/⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐.
I would give the series…
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.
The Fiction Feature 