Raven Boys : The Raven Cycle Book 1 by Maggie Stiefvater - Book Review

“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.

This book was okay, I guess. Initially I thought it would be like Six of Crows, and no, not just because of he similar titles. The story sounded like it would be the same, a bunch of smart guys and a girl or two and them discovering secrets and doing other stuff. But it turned out to be very different, and I must say I prefered Six of Crows to this mess.

The started was, well, frankly speaking, it was horrible. I wasn't even planning on finishing this book but I don't like leaving books halfway through unless they're extremely boring, and I was counting on the story getting better later. The plot did actually improve and I would've said I liked the book, had the first half not bored me so.

The "if you kiss your true love, he'll die" part of the story sounded very annoying. It sounded like all those other books like Marked and Evermore and the irritating side of Twilight. I have honestly had enough of that. Besides, there are so many other things people can do if they can't kiss for fear of falling down dead. They can still hold hands, hug, kiss each other on the cheeks, and if they care so much KISS WITH MASKS ON! I don't get the big deal. Thankfully, it wasn't mentioned much in this book, and it dealt more with the magic and ley lines part of the plot.

In the beginning of the book, the plot seemed very boring. I had thought the book would be more about Blue and her weird life stitching her own clothes. The parts about Gansey and his search for the ley lines were very tedious. I even disliked all the characters because they sounded very proud and snobbish. As the story proceeded, some of them seemed to get better since there were less of their thoughts and more of the story. 

All the useless side plots got under my skin. The few chapters with the point of view of Whelk, I skipped completely. There was absolutely no use of them, since Whelk was just a random character who appeared when needed and vanished according to convenience. Even the whole Neeve-is-so-suspicious thing was quite annoying. It was pretty obvious that she was up to something, so the author should have directly gotten to it, instead of stretching it out so much and boring the readers.

Also, the author expected us to be able to relate to a handsome, extremely rich dude who was very popular, befriended whoever he wanted but was a scholar and explorer at heart, searching for a dead king. Not only that, we were also expected to feel sorry for him when certain, very normal (or better than normal) things happened. Please excuse me if I don't feel bad for you stumbling upon a magical grove with your high-teach helicopter where you discover something you've been searching for your whole life.

Everyone around Gansey acted as if he was like he was because he was rich. Not all rich people go around telling off others and making them feel small useless for being poor. Gansey was condescending not because of his money but because he was that horrible.

I hated Ronan and Adam even more than Gansey. They had very inflated egos and thought themselves very amazing for doing barely anything during their search for the ley lines. The author tried to make Ronan this mysterious, angry person with a "fierce soul", but failed. He did nothing but annoy me, and how Gansey was so accepeting of his wrong behaviour got on my nerves. Adam was supposed to be the smart and sensible person of the lot, but his pride got in the way of anything he was expected to be. The way he and Gansey were "connected" and conversed with their eyes was nothing short of creepy. They didn't even look like such great friends, and didn't know much about each other and could still have amazing details talks simply by looking at each other.

The unnecessary use of adjectives and long words to make the book look pretty didn't work out as the author must've hoped. I skipped so much of the book without missing out of anything. The author had made the dull beginning of the book too long for it to be nice and ended the book abruptly later. I didn't like how the author ended their search for the ley lines. Gansey had been supposedly searching for them his entire life, and now suddenly Blue waltzes in and everything solves itself. It was very unsatisfactory how everything was handed to them on a silver platter. 

The description of the house where Blue lived was also very vague. The author never specified exactly how many women lived there. Sometimes she made it sound like about fifty of them were there, and at other times just five people in the kitchen made it very full, as if it was unusual for so many people to be there. Sometimes only Persephone, Calla and Maura were said to be living there, and other times their living room was packed with the residents of the house and there were long lines for the bathroom.

I would give this book about two and a half stars because the story got better at the end. The characters were all very annoying, but Gansey appeared a little better at the end, once we got used to his annoying-ness.