Creepy series . . . love it!!

Hey guys!

Remember the last post about how it would be a while before I wrote a review for The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater? Yeah, well, I kind of surprised myself. The day before it was due, I thought that I would be busy hanging out with people, which is why I wasn't expecting any miracles on the book front.

It turns out that my schedule cleared up and I had time to read. And I got really into Stiefvater's book. I've read a lot of Stiefvater's work before, such as the Shiver trilogy and The Scorpio Races, so I was already a fan going in.

Needless to say, by the end of the day, I only had 50 pages left of the book, so I figured I may as well keep it and just pay the overdue fines. I mean, come on, what's 50 cents?

So, like many of Maggie Stiefvater's books, The Raven Boys has a very interesting cast of characters.

Blue is a girl who is very good at standing out. But that also means that she kind of stands apart. She comes from a family of psychics (chiefly her mother and her aunts), but she herself is not a psychic. Her presence just makes psychic energies more pronounced for psychics. Coming from a family of psychics, she has been told, for as long as she can remember, that her kiss will cause the death of her true love. Regardless to say, she's never really believed that she could fall in love.

She also has a deep-rooted hatred for the privileged boys from Aglionby Academy, also known as the raven boys. So, on St. Mark's Eve, when she is at an abandoned ruin of a church with her half-aunt, Neeve, to take down the names of the future dead who walk by on the corpse road, Blue can see one of them. He is a boy wearing an Aglionby sweater. When Blue asks her aunt why she could see him and none of the others when she couldn't before, her aunt replies that Blue is either his true love, or she will be the one to kill him within a year.

Gansey (also known as Richard Gansey III) is a typical, rich Aglionby boy on the surface. Coming from an affluent family and with his unintentional condescension, it is assumed that he is spoiled rotten and will one day run for Congress. But, while it is true that he is careless with money, he has an unusual passion and it's not for politics. He is in a mad hunt for Glendower, an old Wales King. Research shows that Glendower could be buried right in Henrietta, Virginia, which is why Gansey attends Aglionby. Legend says that the Wales King isn't truly dead, but in a deep sleep, and whoever wakes him will be granted a favor. Which is why Gansen employs the help of his three friends in his frantic search: Adam, Ronan, and Noah.

Adam is the scholarship student attending Aglionby by working three jobs to pay for the rest of his tuition. Why doesn't Adam just go to a public school? Because it's his ticket out of his double wide and he wants to be able to prove that he is independent. It's not that Adam is ashamed of his background (although he does often begrudge Gansey and Ronan their money), but his primary objective is to get away from his father.

Ronan is the tough guy with a tattoo who skips classes, doesn't get along with his jerk of a brother, and whose father committed suicide. He's also really aggressive. But don't take Ronan at face-value. He cares about his friends (even if he doesn't show it) and he reserves some special tenderness for the baby raven he found one night and took as a pet.

Now Noah . . . Noah is a very complicated character. I can't reveal too much about Noah. It would be too much of a spoiler. So let me just say that Noah is very intuitive. And kind of adorable when he's with Blue. She has weird, spiky hair and he likes to pet it. It might sound creepy, but it's actually really cute.

I highly recommend this book for anybody. It's not chick-lit, and it's really well-written. It's also got a pretty spooky atmosphere, which I absolutely love. Hunting for ghosts, psychics, a strange wood that is really trippy when you take a walk through it. . . . How much spookier could you get?

And guess what? The Raven Boys is the first in a series called The Raven Cycle. So, the next time I go to the library, I will check to see if they have the second installment which is called The Dream Thieves. I'm hooked, so if I don't find it at the library, I'm totally going to get it on my Kindle. Oh yeah, and I'm definitely going to write a review for it.

Hope you enjoyed this review, and I hope you will give The Raven Cycle a try. It's a really good read, trust me.

Happy reading!!